Richard Weaver: “In the Year of the Mullet”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born on the same day that George Armstrong Custer died, though “Autie”, as he called his adopted self, and I never exchanged letters. But that…
May Jordan: “Walking Through”
Walking Through A Sunday lit with sunlight made the mountain of snow we accumulated, shine as if a glacier at dawn. I was up-stairs getting dressed for church when suddenly,…
Barbara Conrad: “This Bed”
This Bed I’m counting the years I’ve slept in this Charleston four-poster rice bed, and yes, the men who’ve slept here with me. More than five, fewer than a dozen,…
Paul Jones: “Hell”
About my Southernness: I am still Southern. The other day, I visited the Old St Paul’s Cemetery near Newton, NC. The place is chock full of Setzers, my grandmother’s people.…
David Kirby: “I’m Not the Person She Thinks You Are”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first twenty-one years of my life in Baton Rouge. Like everyone else, I knew all about Billy Cannon, the LSU halfback who won the…
Dead Mule Submissions and more…
Hey ya’ll. I sent an email to those of you out there with submissions sitting in the Submittable hopper for the last eight months or more. Basically, if you submitted…
What’s Your Label? Valerie MacEwan
I choose my label. “Writer” It’s rectangular. And temporary. I remove the large blue HELLO, I AM ____________ paper tag from my sweater and stick it to the mirror. Twenty years ago,…
Alexandra Melnick: Blade Running in the South
(Reprint from 2017 October Issue of the Dead Mule, seems very relevant today) In 1990, at a public lecture series on art in Los Angeles, three out of five leading…
“Our Nativity – 1970” by Dawn Wilson
(From the 2013 December issue of the Dead Mule. Truly a classic.) We had to borrow a baby. That was the least of our troubles. There were half a dozen…
Benjamin Scott: Fiction
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Dallas to a father from Hopkins County, Texas and a mother from Ashley County, Arkansas. I come from a long and proud line…
Ed Brickell: Poetry
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Batesville, Arkansas and was duly moved to Palestine, Texas at the age of three so my dad could try his hand at coaching…
David Earl Williams: Poetry
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up at Greenup County in Kentucky right near Plum Fork Holler. My grandfather was a graduate of Leavenworth in Kansas where he received his federal…
Lenny Lianne: Poetry
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first five-eighth of my life, the formative years, in Virginia and come from Southerners with a love of language and landscape, good storytellers.…
Christopher Lowe: Fiction
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent my first 22 years in Mississippi and my next 17 in south Louisiana. I was driven northward by hurricanes, but my southern bonafides abide. I…
Claire Massey: Poetry
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My grandparents’ Mississippi home was my port in a storm. There was literal nourishment (oh, that gumbo and cornbread!) as well as literary food for a budding…