poetry
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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
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They Themselves Have No Papers
They do not come in the nightlike the frights of childhood.In broad daylight, in masks in unmarked trucks and SUVs;without insignia, without badgeswithout the necessary legal papers–they themselves have no papers–to seize people off the streetfor being brown while employed,for speaking Spanish in public.It’s as if they launched a pogromagainst the European honey beefor daring… Continue reading
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Another Police Riot
This poem was published in Unlikely Stories Version Six, and is this sort of writing I spoke about in the last post. Another Police Riot“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of… Continue reading
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Crow Law
Sitting as an old man sometimes must as if waiting for a bus, I picked up a book I keep handy, 250 Poems A Portable Anthology, which I let fall open to pick me a poem and found a new favorite Crow poem. CROW LAW Linda Hogan p. 1993*========================The temple where crow worshipswalks forward in… Continue reading
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Spare me Lear and Hamlet
for Nancy Spare me Lear and Hamlet.The height and depth of madnessmeet together in The Tenantwho drags their battered bodyup the twisted stairs and backto that window to plunge again. Continue reading
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Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you.If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.No two… 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 