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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
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Washed Away
Jimmy Reiss, a prominent local businessman and then-head of the (New Orleans) Business Council, told the Wall Street Journal that the city would come back in “a completely different way: demographically, geographically, and politically”, or he and other white civic leaders would not return. The Bricks laid carefully byCreole craftsmen demolished,replaced with mock historicalstick and… Continue reading
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Becoming
“I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”– Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Continue reading
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We are here to laugh at the odds
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own… 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, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, 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 