resistance
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My Neighbors
The neighbor I want is the youngLatino couple who lived next doorto us on Toulouse Street almost20 years ago. The young man cameout and offered to change my tire.I said I’m not that old, I can do it.He came back with two Modelos and sat with me until I was done, ICE can Fuck right 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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Shatter Complacency
“Poetry should be written so that if you throw a poem at the window, the glass will shatter.” – Daniil Kharms, 1930 Continue reading
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2025
On The Centennial of Benito Mussolini’s Assumption of Dictatorial Powers in 1925 let us string piano wire like holiday tinsel and hang memorial ornaments to resistance, dangle the masked fatigue green monsters by their ankles while singing the carol of the partisan, crack poppers heard round the world and wear paper tricorn hats of Lexington Continue reading
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Reading the News at Breakfast
they break us like eggs to feed their insatiable hungerleaving us nothing—just their careless mess expecting us to clean up in quiet obedience it’s time to press theiruncalloused hands into the fire untiltheir grasping fingers sizzle like bacon Continue reading
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The Price of Humanity
I am increasingly comfortable with the karmic cost of my unbridled hate for MAGA. My father was not a bad man; certainly not an evil man. I wish for everyone MAGA from Trump on down, all of them, what my father wished for the Nazis in Belgium in 1944: in service to the ideals of Continue reading
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I Refuse
“To your mad world, one answer: I refuse.” — Marina Tsvetaeva 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
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 