poetry
-
Another Anecdote of a Jar
You were never meant to hold that much without breaking, the ad for some tincture promising happiness said. Don’t buy it.There are flowers and leaves and mushroomsenough in the forest. The only bottle you needis one for cool water so you can remain quietly with the unmolested medicine still rooted in the earth, both you… Continue reading
-
Reading Poetry to the Anhinga
I’ve done something to my achilles, possibly pushing way too hard into barefoot shoes, although at 69 it could be any number of things. I have, for example, somehow developed duck-footedness and often sit with my feet balanced on their ball, an anxiety thing that probably doesn’t do my achilles any good either. I was… Continue reading
-
Beautiful Things That Come Late in Life
I’m reading straight through Louise Glück, wondering how I missed her decades ago, why she didn’t leap out at me from some anthology, before I settled into reading the same dozen books over and over for the middle-class, mortgage part of my life, too busy with the kids. There are a raft of poems in… Continue reading
-
Polaroid
A post prompted by the editor’s note to the November 2025 Poetry I had left unopened. Poetry resembles photography from the age of the film camera. There was no phone in your hand. You had to fetch the thing, load it with film carefully and advance it to the ready, wait for the flash to… Continue reading
-
Bury me in that warm country
And it was at that age … Poetry arrivedin search of me. — Pablo Neruda A poem from almost 25 years ago, back when I started writing poetry again having given it up in my youth. This was written while I still lived in Fargo we’re fleeting summer was a pleasure. Lilacs at the lastLilacs… Continue reading
-
His Harem
My Queen accused her borderline doddering monarch of cultivating a “harem” of admirers. This was never my intent, although I was most pleased to discover poetry could still have this effect upon women in this algorithmic age. I must confess the attraction is mutual, because I’m only emotionally and physically attracted to women who are… Continue reading
-
Venus v. the Barbarians
I’m reading Bill Lavender’s book of poems, City of God, which combines commentary on our modern world and his thoughts on Augustine’s old book. at the same time I have found a blog, Via Negative, which frequently speaks to or shares images of the ancient Venuses whichever on my own mind of late. And somehow… Continue reading
-
Everette* Would’ve
If you catch yourself Googling Picasso’s young lover (Françoise Gilot) just because some lush young woman enthused about some pretty-good, give-away poem posted online for #napowrimo put down the tablet and go write in your notebook in some no-bars bar where nobody knows your name beneath a television baseball game you pathetic old coot of a… Continue reading
-
His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
You’re upsetting Henry, said Mr. Bones, but in a good way. No it is not from the longer book from which I stole the title. The post title just fits the stolen stanzas. My lady partner (not my wife) is not “a complete nothing” although the image of another woman entering the scene, which I… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
.
Well Bottom Blues 