poet
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No Time to Reminisce
Yellowing awards, that underdog political win, corporate accolades, that fat Bank bonus that went into a kitchen in the house sold after the divorce. Two practically perfect children who don’t call often enough. A few old friendships almost our same age. It’s been quite a run but I’m not done. At the edge of decrepitude… Continue reading
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Forgive Us Our Trespasses
For National Poets Day… Those sad poems longing for an oboeistand Wow, those trombones: Cool itDaddy-O. Cutting up like Krupaon those consonants, likeTito’s on timbales. Stop that.Sorry but I grew up with a soundtrackcourtesy of Top 40 before corporateresegregated the radio spectrum,and all that Album Oriented Rock,Bowie and Gabriel playing the stagelike transvestite Valkyries as… Continue reading
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The Elephant In His Room
The elephant is malcontented. Captivityin my imagination is stultifying. They pacerelentlessly, trumpeting and tramplingtheir straw littered concrete savannah. I was told not to think of them, and they would not trouble my nights butthey’re as present as not-thinking-about-them makes them out to be because they are real. We’ve met and I have gently touched their… Continue reading
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Ekphrasis: The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa Through the lens of imminent disaster Fuji—the anchoring backdrop of ten thousand pastoral moments–—is a disinterested bystander. The mountainous water towers over the iconic peak and the doomed boats. The sailor’s backs are turned to the crest of threatening fingers, their hands clasped in muscular prayer… Continue reading
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Learning From the Birds
I have loved what is beyond my reach so it’s no surprise I spend a lot of time alone with the water birds in the forest arboretum. I didn’t realize learning to appreciate beauty in this way was an emotional apprenticeship. The egrets are fly-away skittish but others–anhinga, green heron–will linger nearby comfortably in my… Continue reading
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Going Quiet in the Forest
For a forest friend Going quiet in the forest is exhilarant living.Leave your sugar frosted lattespeaker phone in airplane mode.Choose wild cherries and passion flowers.There are thrills in trills in the trees,the slow dance of coasting birds,frog song conga lines at dusk.Go quietly and with someonewho stoops to toad stools; stops, looksand listens with hawk-sharp… Continue reading
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Beautiful Things That Come Late in Life
I’m reading straight through Louise Glück, wondering how I missed her decades ago, why she didn’t leap out at me from some anthology, before I settled into reading the same dozen books over and over for the middle-class, mortgage part of my life, too busy with the kids. There are a raft of poems in… Continue reading
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Venice’s Relentless Tides
Fuck whoever is behind the crossbar.This is not about who was crucified and why. This is introduction to Western Civilization. Read the syllabus, do the work or you’ll nevermake it out of the auditoriums.This is not a safe space. This is the world you aspire to inherit in all its glorious horrorsa British Museum of… 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 