poetry
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Weight of Witness
I DON’T KNOW HOW MANYSOULS I HAVEFernando Pessoa I don’t know how many souls I have.I’ve changed at every moment.I always feel self-estranged.I’ve never seen or found myself.From being so much, I have only soul.A man who has soul has no calm.A man who sees is just what he sees.A man who feels is not… Continue reading
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Agoraphonia
Trying to read Bernadette Mayer’s Agoraphobia over lunch in a crowded food court is like a holiday in schizophrenia. The sentences run like rivulets after a wave back into the ocean of voices echoing off the walls & I can no more find the sense of it than I can explain the mathematics of fractals… Continue reading
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I Refuse
“To your mad world, one answer: I refuse.” — Marina Tsvetaeva Continue reading
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Ask me, Basho said, If I care
I called Basho. He confirmed. He was the one who said, “The journey itself is home.” I told him the critics in my department Think words like “journey” are empty cliches. “Ask me,” Basho said, “If I care.” —Luis Urrea, “Babylonian Alphabets: A Poet’s Notebook Continue reading
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How do you love this world?
How do you love this world? How do you, after you’ve ingested all its cruel lessons, all the poison and disappointment and rage and betrayal of it? Is it accomplished through religion? Do you pray without ceasing? The oak tree is always praying. But how do you love this life? How do you honor this… 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, 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 