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I Want A Cigarette So Bad
I want a cigarette so bad my hand trembles at the thought of the flare of the match. Fire. Smoke. Calm as ancient as frankincense, smoke rising up to the heavens. I want a steady hand so bad my stomach clenches at the thought of the meds paych’s pill nurses would push to calm my craving… Continue reading
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The Surrender of New Orleans
The rode in our Mardi Gras Parades: ICE, La Migra, in an armoured car labeled Police (they are not; they can’t arrest anyone without a judicial warrant), in forest camo and tactical vests throwing beads and bobbing their heads on the 1 and 3 to the adjacent band. They rode through a city that would… Continue reading
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A-I-a-i-no
What art if any? No, it’s not possible, from a statistical concurrence and concordance of wordshowever clever, from the library of books scatteredat random on the floor: the Internet.Large language models pile up wordslike Legos: that plastic thing it’s not a bird.No algorithmic prayer makes the golemsing or dance or draw: Soul is morethan mathematics… Continue reading
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deadfall
deadfall isn’t death: a native feast for mushroom and ground cover, for all that crawls beneath the leaves and all that climb or call from trees. Continue reading
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Hello?
Me, lying in bed eyes closed but awake (I think) and hear Patrice clearly say something. I respond . P: What? Me: I was just replying. P: I didn’t say anything. Me: I heard you. I’m not asleep so it couldn’t be a dream. [beat] P: Sometimes I think aliens are trying to communicate with… Continue reading
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AWAKE
Brain: WE’RE UP! Body: What? No. We’re exhausted. Brain: There’s a war on, soldier. Rise and shine. Body: [Looks at elapsed time on CPAP.] We’ve only had six hours sleep. Deeply, physically exhausted. Can’t stop yawning.. Brain: We have to write this down. Body: [Deep, jaw-cracking yawn. Another.] Brain: RFK, Jr. wants to put people… Continue reading
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Snowshoeing on the Red River of the North
What brought a boy from Bayou St. Johnto the frigid edge of the Red River of the North,on a sunny, windless 10° day in February,to strap on bentwood & gut beavertail snowshoes& crunch contentedly into the solitary snow? There was a single tree on an isolated spit of landbehind the adjacent subdivision where only I… Continue reading
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Gods and Monsters
The gods were always monstrous. Ovid told us so. The Hebrew Bible is a nightmare for the less elect. The Great Men of history were always clay, hollow idols filled with iniquity. As the old gods drifted out of focus we raised up new idols on mythic screens with headline testaments. We hymned the chosen… Continue reading
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Struck numb
Struck numbin the new yearby fresh horrors.The old yearscythes throughthe new, bodiesscattered likefirework wrappers.A year bornin blood and terrorwith politicianscrawling overthe mangled carcassfor the cameras. Monster truckzero to 60in four secondssilent electricengine twistscelebrationinnocentssheet metalinto horror.Does it matterwhich flagor religionthis broken mandeclared his banner? Each newhorror inspiresa lone Hero(he thinks)ready trainedto kill the Othermore horrificallyto honor… 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 