poem
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Reading the News at Breakfast
they break us like eggs to feed their insatiable hungerleaving us nothing—just their careless mess expecting us to clean up in quiet obedience it’s time to press theiruncalloused hands into the fire untiltheir grasping fingers sizzle like bacon Continue reading
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The Island of Doctor Jeffers
Reading the long, narrative poems in the stout Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers takes me back to a book I read long ago: H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau. So many of his characters are monstrous deformities, half human and half animal. Not that such people don’t exist-the news today is filled with them-but Continue reading
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Next Weekend at Marienbad
Let’s go! Outof here intoa b&winnocencea distantpalatial set piecethe classyevening clothesthe driftof mysterydropping our ragsworried into holes and be strangersmeant for each otheragain. Continue reading
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Savior on a Stick
Savior on a stick—nickel a pop &a penny each to the poor orphans from the soft hands of the most reverendmen in sharp suitsof Calvary, LLC Continue reading
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Conquer the Impossible
It was impossible to make it through the tragedy Without poetry. — Joy Harjo Continue reading
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an unnatural shade of moonlight
clouds, city-lit an unnatural shade of moonlight one faint twinkle longing for the brilliant indigo darkness of the stars — Mark Folse Continue reading
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A poem is only non-violent
A poem is only non-violentif its edge is dull. No roseshere at the razor wire frontierof a future built with bones.There are no butterflies on the wire; your lover’spastoral visa is cancelledno dreamscapes; only nightmares.You can run to the lyric gardenbut you can’t hide. They’ll comefor the lovers and poetssure as Winston Smith. Your MasterCard 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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Bury me in that warm country
There is a primordial order, transcendent / of languages, the form for casting poetry. Continue reading
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Down Into and Through and Out of Darkness
“this is the cold doing” — Charles Olson, “in cold hell, in thicket I do not know if I want another pill or a drill to trepan this malevolence that hangs like a dark shroud or a straight razor to slice life out of time. This is not a threat or letter in an unsteady 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 