poetry
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I Miss the Crisp Leaves
I miss the crisp leaves who’ve stolenJoseph’s coat, my now grown kidstoddling through an acre of pumpkinson the vine, wandering the corn mazein the dark, the scary hayride, hot chocolate after around the fire. I don’t miss Minnesota’s mosquitoeswith their alien proboscis ride alongsraised welts on my bayou-tested skin.Summer waited for the Fourth whileJune poured Continue reading
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There’s more, Leonard
“Poetry is just the evidence of life.If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”– Leonard Cohen I saw this Instagram post quote and thought: ash like the black strain on paper. but also the warmth of shared connection, the flicker of imagination’s possibilities, and the smoke rising up to the heavens. Continue reading
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Berryman’s Sonneta, con’t.
There are now 19 pages in the manuscript Stop Reading Berryman’s Sonnets, Dammit. Lord help me. I’m struggling with whether to keep posting them here or getting a chapbook manuscript together. Double I sing, I must, your utraquist,Crumpling a syntax at a sudden need,Stridor of English softening to pleadO to you plainly lest you more Continue reading
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Galactic Vocabulary
Reading Author Sae’ collection The Glass Constellation and I’m grateful it’s on Kindle because of the ease of looking up his galacticly vast vocabulary. If, sitting assembled in that university workshop, you find my formal-leaning lines of poetry simplistic: it’s OK. I wasn’t writing for you. Continue reading
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It’s time to take Anxiety for a walk
It’s time to take Anxiety for a walk. He won’t take a leash; she only comes when I don’t call; to calm us both we need to retreat to the trees. This is my hof, my temple, my cathedral.Not gods exactly but simultaneously chthonic and a partof the heavens. Tree of Life Genesis and RevelationsKalpavriksha Continue reading
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EL JOROBADO
EL JOROBADOBeen living on the outskirts. My leather bag of sweet corn, my cane of resentments. Been taking my time, my proper salutations to the Hood, this deep embarkation toward you, hermana-remember me?Day one: when you introduced me to your servants. Day two: when you guessed at my deep accent, the one you said was Continue reading
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Blesséd Are the Bipolar
hymn to Sts. Byron, Thomas, Plath and Lowellthree solid draft poems in the last two hours so it goes for those blessed with the darkangel of hypo-mania black cousin of Duendebut not as dark as the hours of anhedonia Continue reading
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I’m Auto-Tuned Out
I’m Auto-Tuned Out I have a voice that is not auto-tunedto the popular. Stanzas: what’s upwith that? And rhyme sometimes.Blame that Bob Dylan character,and Ian Anderson. And, oh, all those Norton Anthologies, starting us onVol. 1 so young and impressionable.I can carry a note but my ear is tunedto the page, however I might humas Continue reading
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Spin the (pharmacy) bottle
The medication for REM sleep disorder, what leads me to occasionally smack Patrice with my left arm as I reach out to catch a baseball or assume yoga positions while asleep, foregrounds my amazing Technicolor dreamscape which I jokingly refer to as the Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness. It is overriding another medication 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 