Davis Slater: Helping Daddy Win
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised between the Mississippi and the Ozarks, where Missouri eats into Arkansas, you can walk to Tennessee, and you can wave at Kentucky, I'm now vegan, not for health or environmental reasons, but because I'm pretty sure I ran the entire South out of edible critters when I was a boy.
Jeanne Lupton: Candy
Southern Legitimacy Statement
I live in the place of my yearning, Northern California, but I can't get Virginia out of miy mind, 250-year-old Hopewell Friends Meeting House on a hill with the Blue Ridge in view, homecoming picnics there with a hundred cousins, some aunts named Ms. Pigeon, all eating fried chicken, deviled eggs, potato salad, watermelon, chocolate cake, staying cool in the breeze, calling me Thee. Dear Grandma laughing, "Everybody's crazy but me and Thee, and sometimes I wonder about Thee."
Tobi Cogswell: Two Poems
SLS - Tobi Cogswell began kindergarten in Dallas. Even though it was many years ago, she still remembers her first dog was a "Heinz 57" named Sam Finkelstein the Third Rifkin. She remembers a family outing to the zoo where a lion peed on her best friend Betsy who lived down the street, and eating chicken fried steak at the Surrey, in a shopping center where a Wil Wrights was freestanding in a corner of the parking lot. Today she has good friends in Texas, and is pleased to see at least one of them in an earlier issue of this journal.
Phillip Thompson: Kenny’s Saturday Night Cake Walk
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I didn't have a "grandmother" or a "Nana." I had a Granny. She wore red lipstick, always carried a pistol, drove fast, smoked cigarettes, believed in the Good Lord, cooked with lard (in which everything was fried -- chicken, okra, corn, you name it), took all 10 grandkids fishing and was capable of slapping the taste out of your mouth if you sassed her (not that you ever would). She didn't say "sweet" tea because there's only one kind of tea in Mississippi (that's spelled M-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-humpback, humpback-I), and if you ask for "sweet tea," you're clearly a damn Yankee. Or a carpetbagger, take your pick. She had more grandkids than she had room, so we stayed outside a lot in the summer -- shirtless, shoeless, sweaty and loud and buying Co-Colas at Bubba Cox's store or playing in the bed of Granddaddy's dump truck. If we behaved, we could come in to cool off and listen to "Ode to Billie Joe" on the record player. She said things like "that boy's as crazy as a junebug" and "bless her heart." From the South? Hell, she was the South.
Phillip Thompson: A Novel “Deep Blood”
Review copies arrive on a semi-daily basis here on Brown St. This month brought quite a few volumes of teen fiction and those were passed on to willing recipients. Then there were the two novels that were especially readable and...
Celebrate the Fourth of July, 1933 with a Story from Pete Peterson
Southernicity Statement
I live in Southern California but was reared in the Missouri Ozarks and attended schools where more hogs and dogs were under the school house than text books inside. I know that when you hunt coon or squirrel or quail, even turkey, you kill 'em and brag at church how many you killed. However, when fox hunting, the fox holes up after four or five hours and you thank him for a good race and promise to run him again.
I fry chicken in a cast iron skillet that’s been in the family over a hundred years. It makes great cream gravy. My monthly chicken dinners are quarterly affairs now, since my doctor said I’m to eat only foods I like, and fried chicken's not listed. (He doesn't know about the yellow corn grits and sausage on Sunday mornings.)
I understand the difference between the American Baptist, Reel Foot Baptist and Southern Baptist churches and have tasted the baptismal water of all three. I call ladies of a certain age ‘Ma’am’ and younger ones ‘Miss'. Finally, if there’s a more delightful sound than a nightingale singing at midnight from a magnolia tree under a full moon, only angels have heard it.
When I'm not writing you'll find me tending my Arkansas Traveler, Nebraska Wedding or Brandywine heirloom tomatoes,
Danny Collier: Poems
Here is my SLS:
I grew up in Memphis. I am a direct descendant of the Georgia Tann scandal. Once, I rode through Weakley County in the passenger seat of a decrepit MG roadster, unaware that the passenger seat was not bolted to the car. My grandfather hunted deer from his mid-century modern breakfast table, stepping to the porch when it was time to take the shot. I know the location of the capital city of the kingdom of Skullbonia. I have almost finished a book-length manuscript of poems related to chickens.
“A Very Bad Thing” by Jim Booth
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Jim Booth was born and raised in Eden, North Carolina. He wrote a novel about his hometown – you could look it up. His other novel has the word “Southern” in the title. You could look that up, too. He likes barbecue and sweet tea. What more do you need to know?
“Imagining a Son’s Barns Elsewhere From Here” by Tom Sheehan
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I once worked in the south, went through the south to and from an appointment in Korea in 1950-51, have written many stories set in the south, had four books published in the south and many Internet and print appearances in the south, including Dead Mule some time in the past in that southern exposure.
Poetry
Essays
