poetry
-
The Rhythm of Human History
My comment on this Substack post: https://open.substack.com/pub/poeticknowledge/p/an-introduction-to-the-rhythm-of?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3ibxf As a poet of 68 years I find that I and many of my contemporaries use accentual lines of a certain number of beats without regard to syllable count. We were all schooled in both canonical English verse and the free verse that emerged in the 20th century.… Continue reading
-
A Factory of Reinvention
The first time Sam (her chosen name)went down to the riverI stayed on the stepstipped a musicianfor St. James Infirmarywhile her husband Davescattered Rebecca(her given name)into the Mississippi. New Orleansis a factoryof reinvention.Come as you are.Be who you wish.Leave by the river. I only called herby her pen name–rather her personna–in the boisterous bohemia of… Continue reading
-
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
-
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
-
I have fallen out of love with Barbie
I have fallen out of love with Barbie the silicone injection bullet breasts the vacant expression, the lifeless eyes. I have fallen out of love with the heroinchic, anorexic stick of marketing models the vacant expression, the lifeless eyes. I have fallen out of love with the bosomydisproportionate selected by publishers of my youth as… Continue reading
-
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
-
Out of a Canon
without a net… This was originally written in verse as an appendix to a resignation letter to the MFA program I’ve dropped out of mostly because I can’t afford it but also because of subtle but pervasive age incrimination An ancient whale washed up on Lakeshore Drive with barnacles as old as the the University’s… Continue reading
-
Not A Children’s Book
I wonder how a book of adult themed poems in the style of children’s books would sell? if it needs some appropriate illustrations. Definitely NOT a children’s poem there is a thing inside my head it wakes me up when I’m in bed imagine squirrels on a wheel frantically spinning with a squeal and I’ll… Continue reading
-
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
-
His Raptures
so many,I had not thought death had undone so many. — T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland” Not death but that fine madness, though so many ended their own lives: John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Delmore Schwartz. I have lied about suicidal ideation to psych although that has mostly been a creative excersise. Have you ever thought: stop… 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).
.
