Author: MacEwan

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Fiction

Ben Shields … “Jim Threw Things From Trucks”

I grew up on a plantation. I've been baptized. My grandmother just died. At her house there's a monster sycamore. My grandfather hung a fire extinguisher on it probably thirty years ago or more for fish frying. The tree grew around it, and now there's just a piece of pale red not yet sucked up into the bark. My family is selling the house and the little piece of land it sits on. It's absolutely heartbreaking. I've got pictures of it on my cell phone. That disturbs me more.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Fiction

Chad Rhoad: A Novel Excerpt Or an excerpt from a novel…

SLS: I come from a town with 700 residents in South Carolina. I thought it was legal to drink and drive until I was 14. I fired a gun before I kissed a girl. I use the word ain't in my proper speech, and I pronounce the word "can't" the same way I do the word "ain't." I am the only liberal in my hometown. I never stay longer than 24 hours at a time.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

Heath Carpenter: Postmodern Reality Television: White County, Arkansas

SLS: I have spent the majority of my life in small-town Arkansas, with small stints in Europe and Florida. In that time I have experienced the glorious and the grit that encompass Southern living: Mint juleps and front porch sitting mixed with dirt roads and mosquito swatting. In the end, I am more Southern Gothic than Southern Gentry; give me Oxford American over Garden and Gun-- O'Connor, Faulkner, and Percy are my champions.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

John Lane – Three Poems

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Much of my genetic material has been circulating between the blue Southern sea and the Blue Ridge for over 200 years. (My sister, an obsessive genealogist, can certify this.) A few family names: Mary Caldonia Behealer, Christopher Columbus Bradley (“Lum”), Walter Scott Lane, Aunt Lottie Belle. will send my mother’s pinto bean recipe upon request.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

June Poets

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Does being a vegetarian disqualify me from being “southern”? I have accepted grits, cornbread, okra, and ridiculously sweet iced tea, but I can’t abide collards and barbeque. I don’t have loquacious uncles spinning yarns at huge family reunions or eccentric aunties that out-butter Paula Deen. All I have is a developed love of the land as I have lived over half my life now in North Carolina. I have hiked in the Great Smokies and splashed off the Outer Banks. I have gardened in the Piedmont’s red clay and in the flat sand of the coastal plain. Elizabeth City is the fourth NC city for me, trending eastward from High Point. A remnant of the Great Dismal Swamp is in my back yard along with the Pasquotank River. They inspired these poems.
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Blog

April – May front page and links

April – May 2013:  Twenty-Eight Poets featuring Joseph Bathanti NC Poet Laureate 2012-2014 Two Original Poems Written in Celebration of Poetry at the Mule April will meld into May here on the Mule… New Fiction. Fabulous Fiction.   Remember: We publish new Fiction and Essays on...
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Fiction

“Damn Tourists” by John Baradell, Jr.

SLS: Most of my family was born and raised in the Deep South, and remains there (Mississippi, Alabama, and East Texas). Things get a bit confused by some in those areas when they find out that I grew up in the Upper South of Tidewater, Virginia. When they hear my soft accent or that I prefer to be asked first before my tea is sweetened, I am sometimes accused of being a Yankee (not that there's anything wrong with that). Not so with my family, though--I'm still Southern through and through--and proud of it. I'm so Southern that I can go into great detail about my usual scratch staple of grits and its historical importance to the South's survival. True, but I eat them so often (always stone ground--never instant) because they're soooo good. Plus, I know the difference between a chicken house and a hen house, and have met both chicken catchers and chicken sexers.