cryptic envelopment
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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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The Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness
The medication for REM sleep disorder, what leads me to occasionally smack Patrice with my left arm as I reach out to catch a baseball or assume yoga positions while asleep, foregrounds my amazing Technicolor dreamscape which I jokingly refer to as the Chase Light Calliope Fun House of Madness. It is overriding another medication… Continue reading
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Enemy of the Wrong People
I’ve never requested my FBI file but I’m pretty sure it goes back over 50 years to my freshman year in high school. Our service class was a comparison between the US and Soviet system. And there was a model UN. I was assigned Taiwan, and decided instead in 1971 to represent the People’s Republic… Continue reading
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Calf Foot Blues
Daube marrowboiling in thispot black, hissinggas ring hot night,a slow reduction tothe elemental inthe fan-stirredsimmer of thisgelatin evening. Originally published in The Dead Mule of Southern Literature. Continue reading
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Lebensraum
Do all men kill the things they do not love? -Bassanio, Act IV, Scene 1 Continue reading
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Lazarus
Resurrection is a neat trickbut Lazarus wasn’t particularly impressedthe second time around. A walking parable,he stood alone on Golgotha,in mute testament asthe sun reappearedand the Romans departed. On the third day Lazarussat contemplatingthe great stone standingin grave monumentbefore the empty tomb,relishing the serene emptinessof the deserted cemetery. Continue reading
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Stations of the Moss
I have made the Stations of the Moss. There is no better resurrectionfor a troubled soul this side of magic than to walk oak alley paths. Continue reading
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Bayou Metairie: the birds
Submerged anhinga U-bird cruises periscope neckup looks for dinner victims The wild ducks feed on weed on the lagoon’send far from the breadbirds Lordly and isolate heronpoised in a cypress kingof wingéd fishers Beggar geese the direct avian descendantsof velociraptors The dark-beaked heroncalled Little Egret, solitaryat lagoon’s far end True egrets flockwhere food might bebeneath… Continue reading
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The Last Temptation of Mark
I finished my Mardi Gras Day with a Buffa Burger, and stepped outside to order a car and vape while I waited. It was a busy day and my wait 25+ minutes, so I stood on the corner and considered the crowd around me. There was a young woman sitting alone at an outside table,… 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 