Memory
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Grinding Ink
My partner and first reader/editor thinks this is a little preachy if not in fact curmudgeonly ranty. Thoughts? Grinding Ink“To whom do we tell what happened on the earth, for whom do we place everywhere huge mirrors in the hope that they will be filled up and will stay so?”—Czeslasz Milosv, “Annalena”I want to swallow… Continue reading
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My Initiation in the Mysteries of the City
That memory is sharp and clear because I recognize it now as the first level of my initiation into the mysteries of the city, my first step toward leaving Robert E. Lee Boulevard behind, entering a broader and deeper city I was sheltered from even on those crosstown shopping trips and by my Uptown education. I… Continue reading
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Open Toes at the Wrong Party
“I went out to the hazel wood,Because a fire was in my head”— “Song of Wandering Aengus,” W.B.Yeats So I went out to the forest and forgot to change my shoes and decided just to walk in my slides wearing these open-toed bamboo brace things for my Achilles, trying not to catch anything between my… Continue reading
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The Last Days of May
I was born in 1957 and so I am reckoned by some one of the last of the baby boomers, that generation borne by the parents who went through World War II. I grew up in a neighborhood full of fathers who had served in World War II, some later in Korea, and frankly I… Continue reading
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The Spirit of the Mask
Something I wrote 17 years ago for sadly departed friend Victoria Slind-Flor, formerly of New Orleans, for the guests of a Carnival Ball in miniature she was hosting in Oakland, CA, To the Honored Members and Guests of the Krewe of Baubo and Ame no Uzume: When one is called to Carnival, the first question… Continue reading
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Gone
I don’t have a memory like a sieve:I have a memory like the big asscolander you use to drain spaghetti with the huge holes you could drive a whole day right through and out of sight, with all its names faces dates flavors aromas chocolate ice cream stains down your shirt the kissthat made you… Continue reading
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The Man Who Knew Godot
Long ago when I first started as an undergraduate I was at a bar speaking to an old man and told him I was an English major and he asked me to recite a poem. I couldn’t. Maybe I could manage Poe’s The Bells for I had that by heart once. Memorizing poetry was a… Continue reading
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Ad Odd Fellows Memorial Day
An excerpt of a longer piece originally published on Toulouse Street – Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. I was born in 1957 and so I am reckoned by some one of the last of the baby boomers, that generation borne by the parents who went through World War II. I grew up in… Continue reading
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If on a winter’s night a crisp crackling hiss
Outside it was minus 41 farenheit, ambient, in the bright, white night. Inside it was 1910 Craftsman all original except the electric stove and water heater circuit, the rest cloth hung from glass posts. You could measure in hands how much horsehair was left in the frigid wall, between seven and ten. The windows were… Continue reading
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At the Gentilly A&P
At the Gentilly A&P where old Black men came up to me and said, Where’s this? pointing at a list I knew they could not read and I would take them up and down the aisles until their cart was full. It was there I saw two men in well-slept, street-rough clothes with a handful… 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 