poetry
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Mary Oliver
To: The Algorithms Re: Mary Oliver Yes I love poetry and Mary Oliver writes lovely poems but constantly popping her up on my timeline is like suggesting I practice relaxation breathing in the kitchen as I make a cup of tea while the house is on fire. Continue reading
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Jump
Don’t move left or right. Don’t creep like a pawn. Move like Knight rampant. Move like a Queen. Continue reading
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A poem is only non-violent
A poem is only non-violentif its edge is dull. No roseshere at the razor wire frontierof a future built with bones.There are no butterflies on the wire; your lover’spastoral visa is cancelledno dreamscapes; only nightmares.You can run to the lyric gardenbut you can’t hide. They’ll comefor the lovers and poetssure as Winston Smith. Your MasterCard… Continue reading
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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 morality.” ― James Baldwin, The NYPD vomited out of armored trucks black as the horses of Lorca’s Guardia Civil: brutality of batons, tear gas … Continue reading
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Vulture Heavy
I am vulture-heavy. My stories are caskets filled with black feathers, But the dead, in their vast merriment, egg me on. Write the motherfucking poem. See why I love them? — “I am vulture heavy”, Diane Seuss I am capable of light verse but it’s not my natural tendency. I’ve been diagnosed variously with adhd,… Continue reading
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Gone
I don’t have a memory like a sieve:I have a memory like the big asscolander you use to drain spaghetti with the huge holes you could drive a whole day right through and out of sight, with all its names faces dates flavors aromas chocolate ice cream stains down your shirt the kissthat made you… Continue reading
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History II: Revenge of the Stupid
There is nothing quite as vacuous Americanas the remake, the failure of imaginationafter the MBAs and the accountantstake control, repeating the same stories over and over like a time-tested lullabyuntil everyone is sufficiently asleep. Are you ready for the AI directeddo-over of Kent and Jackson Stateor for Detroit 67 and Watts 68?Japanese Internment? Operation Wetback?The… Continue reading
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Lines on His 68th Birthday
(much) after Everette Maddox Atop the spoil pile left over from digging the lagoons whichslowly slides and subsidesback to the natural flatof this river bottom city In June’s mock-August swoon, after a difficult ascent withan old man’s AWOL big toesand the huff and puffof 50 years of cigarettes So many battles of my youthfought nearby,… Continue reading
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Theory and Play of the Duende
“Tender cries to God….Not form, but the marrow of form…All the arts are capable of duende but where it naturally creates most space is in music, dance and spoken poetry, the living flesh is needed to interpret them…the duende wounds..the magic power of a poem consists of it being filled with Duende.” — Frederico Gardía… Continue reading
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Interrupted by Hummingbirds
Compose your life like a prose poem suddenly interrupted by hummingbirds mistaking a woman’s perfume for wildflowers in Arles. A fast and bulbous moon the only excuse necessary for hallucinatory episodes at the Starbucks counter, visualizing Cthulhu in the foam and blocking the concoction of monstrous coffee drinks. When confronted with a Don’t Walk sign,… 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 