poem
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One World, Two Realms, Four Days
After Gary Snyder On the porch of a cottage on a pond by Coulée Ditader just above Bayou Teche St. Martin Parish, Louisiana 13 February 2026 8:00 a.m. I overslept the quiet alarmI set to not disturb PatriceIt’s a gray morning anywayso what if sunrise slinked pastIf I I had been awake gone in just now… Continue reading
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Happy Smiling People
Happy Smiling People Writing PoemsI am trying to write a happy poem.Something Mary Oliverish withlove and epiphanies and rainbows and flowers and butterflies landing on my hand and—all that shit.My first attempt came out: Happy Smiling PeopleHolding Guns.That’s not it.You can’t say you hate Mary Oliver.That would be like saying you hatethe Easter Bunny.She is… Continue reading
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Meditations in an Emergency
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. — Frank O’Hara, “Meditations in an Emergency” #36 from Stop Reading Berryman’s Sonnets, Dammit I am all men. I’m torn betweenthe delicate pleasure of soft companyand my second adolescence’s burning needfor soft skin, eyes turned vertical afterand a different sort of… Continue reading
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The Android Cried Me A River
I wrote this while rereading the Valis before I went to an art show opening of works dedicated to celebrate the anniversary of the 79th occasion of the birth of Philip K Dick The Android Cried Me a RiverOn the occasion of the 97thanniversary of the birth of Phillip K. DickTake heart, the AI chatbot… Continue reading
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Stop Reading Berryman’s Sonnets, Dammit
(23) If you don’t have laugh lines and crows feetthe forehead crinkles of surprise and delighthave you even lived enough? A roundsoft tummy to lay my head in bed?Hell yes. What would we even talkabout otherwise? You’re onlyas old as I feel you are. If that’smale gazy you have my entire attention. I’m balding gray,… Continue reading
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A Limited Number of Miracles
This poem is inspired by Jonathan Penton’s excellent book A Limited Number of Miracles from Lavender Ink (2025), in which each poem is inspired by a piece in the Bestoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art. It’s not just that fhey took Hercules down in front and moved him to the sculpture… Continue reading
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They Themselves Have No Papers
They do not come in the nightlike the frights of childhood.In broad daylight, in masks in unmarked trucks and SUVs;without insignia, without badgeswithout the necessary legal papers–they themselves have no papers–to seize people off the streetfor being brown while employed,for speaking Spanish in public.It’s as if they launched a pogromagainst the European honey beefor daring… 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 