poetry
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Sonnets to Orpheus
For a gnostic aquaintence: Where do we now locate that greater Spirit in this world of brick on brick, rising toward its fall? For me it moves in the woods, manifest, wearing many names. First Part – XXIVSHALL we reject our primeval friendship, the age-old,The great never entreating gods, because the hard-steeled Does not know… Continue reading
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My New Informalism
The first poet to seriously capture my attention was Wallace Stevens (thank you Raeburn Miller) who could roll those vowels around like the gods’ own thunder and Krupa those pine wood bantam tom toms from here to Azcan. Continue reading
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An Ode-ious History of New Orleans
I can’t think of anywhere I could try to publish this so I’m putting it up here. After the “Beautiful Times” and “The Capital”sections of Czeslas Milosz’s “A Treatise on Poetry”“I remember everything.”—”Natura”, MiloszThe calas woman calling over the muddy road,mounted by her tignon like the loa of womanhood. German bakers shape the baguettes, smell… Continue reading
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The Misappropriated Mermaid
The misappropriated mermaid lords itover poorly paid women told to smile while taking orders. We all are thoroughlytrickled on again. I no longer own a house to leave to my children to bicker overor perhaps to share because who can afford one on their own anymore? It’s toast, hold the avocadoes, from now onin this… Continue reading
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I have got to go fast
Three times must the wheel of blindness turn, before I look without fear at the powersleeping in my own hand…— Czeslaw Milosz, “Slow River”I am not only writing and revising furiously as I look at the hour glass and see the bottom half mostly filled, I just finished all of Glück, a hefty and intoxicating… Continue reading
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Automatic Walking
I have an incorporeal compass insidewhich, when the trail splitsor crosses, knows which way to goas if the life inside chooses fromamong the countless greenshow to visit the feathered cousins & I visited green heron andsaw the egret atop the piling anhinga just a flash of wingshis sharp call across the lagoon & Soon City… Continue reading
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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
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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
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).
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Well Bottom Blues 