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Clown Face
Brain maniacally pedaling the veledromeof cyclothymia and I can’t stop writingabout the women keeping me up at nightbut only in my dreams and calculationsof the tells I think I see across the tableas my second adolescence wobblesonto the track obsessed with his Big Wheelroaring to run away with the circus with-out ending up in Blue Continue reading
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It’s not the coffee
I am Captain Cortisol, The Amazingly Electric Man I start my day with the Heebie Jeebees and coffee. Imagine the visible veins in your skin as wiring now run an unpleasant current through yourselfas if your whole body was an extension of your tongue and you’ve just put that nine volt battery on. It’s that Continue reading
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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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Everything Clicked
As he turned his back to close the door she bent to light a candle. He closed his eyes and sucked in the sharp sulfur and sweet wax smell, listened in his momentary flash of blindness to the snap zip rustle of her dress, the sizzle of the candle, faint laughter in the distant street. Continue reading
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Finding Cortázar’s La Maga
Surrealism and synchronicity: I happened onto Andre Breton’s Nadja while trying to find a new book on my Kindle. My Kindly suggestions are usually overwhelmed by my partner’s voracious appetite for light reading. Fortunately my decision to drive into László Krasznahorkai has led to other interesting books. I noted in the book’s description that it influenced 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
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 