Kathy Ferrell: Two Poems and a Haiku
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
A native and mostly life-long resident of West Virginia, I am descended from several generations of Irish stone masons and English sea-farers. When I discovered that my great grandfather arrived here from Limerick, I immediately understood why I so often think in rhyming verse, and why my father was more comfortable telling stories from his head than from a book.
Possessed of such a strong Appalachian accent that fellow West Virginians dismiss me as a congenital idiot, I’ve learned to use it for my own entertainment. I am adept at forelock tugging and “shining on”. My dream is to see drastic change in what passes for “Patrons of the Arts” in West Virginia, in that I would like to see fewer hors-d’oeuvres and more books and actual paintings in their homes.
I throw rocks with remarkable accuracy for an old woman, and once came jailhouse close to bludgeoning some fool to death with my cast-iron skillet. While he slept off my fried potatoes.
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Curtis Dunlap: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement #7:
These things I learned as a small boy living in the south: 1) A penny placed on a railroad track becomes a highly prized possession after it’s flattened by a train. 2) A dead snake draped across the branch of a tree will end a summer drought and bring rain. 3) Swapping a flattened copper penny for a flattened copperhead is an equitable trade. 4) Draping said snake onto the top of a withered tobacco plant will make it rain, too...leaving an eleven year-old boy with the distinct impression that he’s solely responsible for saving the family farm and the occurrence of Hurricane Abby.
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Peter Sragher: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
southing with the sun. sun never has south. at dawn it drags its red face from east through the cold water, a beauty in its coolness, as if it were blood trying to warm up for the flow through the body. the sun at dusk glows down in the west, far away from our eyes, loosing it’s body in the night mysteries. in midday sun is a yellow sphere you cannot look at, cause you would burn your eyes and wouldn’t see the incandescent raging sun any longer. his face lifts the north, rises the north feeling into the air. i’m though always southing. the sun cannot ever turn south. the stubborn sun cannot get to earth, down, down, to feel my smooth south soul. I will once teach the sun to south, to put his heart on the earth and glide on the feeling.
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Michelle Hartman: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement
Michelle Hartman was left on a doorstep in Fort Worth lo these many years ago by a band of post-reactionary, Pagan Gypsies. After a grueling four years at the Martha Stewart School for Exceptional Females she took her rightful place beside the lucky man who won her in the county "Ho Down". She's taking a break today from polishing silver, planning a week of gourmet meals, buffing the handcuffs nicks off the headboard, and building one hundred and twenty rabbit figures from various sizes of marshmallows, to share her poetry and short thoughts on a complete life.
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Hal J. Daniel III: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Except for a 2 year post doctoral fellow stint at the University of Zurich and a 2 year visiting scholar appointment at the University of Washington, I have lived my entire 69 years in the South including Tennessee, Mississippi and North Carolina.
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Glenn Halak: Two poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I grew up with my great-grandmother half the time and she inspired me to paint and write. She left Georgia in a covered wagon sometime after 1867 - when she was born - to live on a Texas farm near Texarkana and to marry a musician/composer who taught high school bands all his life. When I was two I remember a tornado coming to the farm, a wagon, and then pitch black outside. But I spent most of my growing up time in Wisconsin. My great-grandmother became bedridden when a drunk hit the car my grandmother was driving killing my great-grandfather in 1943. I often lived in their house with its many paintings of southern landscapes and darkly genteel poetry and all the stories of cousins and tornadoes. My grandmother never lost her Texas accent and didn't want to. My great=grandmother was terrified she would wake up in her coffin. She died in bed at the age of 97. I for felt her pulse because my grandmother was afraid to. There was none.
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Daniel Pravda: Sanctuary
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Norfolk, VA and raised in Virginia Beach. I have danced on Jefferson Davis' grave in Richmond and smoked his eagle-claw pipe in Hampton. I live in Norfolk today and teach at Norfolk State University. I say "y'all" every day.
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Vera Tuck: Memoir and Requiem by Randall Ivey
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm so Southern the only other book I allow on my top booshelf besides the Bible is "Gone With The Wind".
Seeker by Cecile Dixon
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mother, Grand-mother, Great Grand-mother, nurse, writer, chief cook and bottle washer, they are all me and they are all Southern. As the years of my self imposed Northern exile roll I by, I have come to know that Southern is who I am, no matter the location.
An Eyepatch and a Grainy Orange Keypad by Kevin Winchester
Southern Legitimacy Statement...well, I poked a dead mule with a stick once. I know where "yonder" is. The first time I traveled north of the Mason-Dixon line I got in an argument with the assistant to the assistant manager because their restaurant did not offer grits on the breakfast menu. Speaking of grits, I like mine with red-eye gravy. I believe Dukes mayonnaise and Cheerwine are part of the vegetable food group. I know how to clean a squirrel. I may or may not have Wilkes County, NC moonshine in a Mason in my cabinet. Did I mention that I know where "yonder" is? Eight generations of my relatives are buried in the red clay of North Carolina, and I reckon I will be too. Right over yonder...
A Birdbrain Journal by Carmen Kunze
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm a native Floridian, born in Hialeah, seasoned lightly in Belle Glade and served up in West Palm Beach. I consider myself a Cuban Cracker.
Ballerina of the Neighborhood by Jeanne Lupton
Southern Legitimacy Statement
How I miss the Virginia countryside, the dusy red dirt, the soft summer rain, the green of the Shenandoah Valley, the damp heat of the swampland where I grew up. I'm so proud Virginia went Obama's way in the election. The Old Dominion ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be. How I love her, even now from the other coast, and I always will.
No Questions No Lies by Eric Boyd
SLS: Me, I grew up in Charlotte, and shortly after having my dog eaten by the people in the apartment building across the creek, was moved up to Pittsburgh by my family. Milled around for a while, then had a sabbatical from 2010-2011 which resulted in my winning the PEN American Center's Prison Writing contest. Weird how things work out. Funny in a sad way.
The Familiar by Sylvia Dodgen
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass to a father, who said, “Yes, Ma’am” to every female no matter how old or young, and a mother, who painted her lips and nails red and wore heels, hose and a garter everyday of the week except Saturdays, when she rode horses with my father then she wore jodhpurs and boots. Her hair was the hardest thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. If for some reason she couldn’t make it to the beauty shop, she took meals in her bedroom, announcing that her hair looked like a “stump full of granddaddies.” She believed in benign neglect. I ran around barefoot in cutoff dungarees without a shirt. The dungaree suspenders pulled over my shoulders and hooked to metal buttons on a bib, covering my chest. I was sandy, freckled and tick-ridden.
Occasionally, daddy would bring in quail and partridge from a Saturday morning shoot. I would pick them clean on Saturday night, while my parents were dining and dancing. We’d have fried quail and grits for dinner at noon on Monday. We ate fried fish roe and grits for breakfast on Sundays and brains and eggs many weekdays. I grew up on scuppernong wine made by my granddaddy. I was a child of the 1950's and life in the Wiregrass was peaceful, pleasant and in some ways peculiar (I just didn’t know it then).
The Vehicle My Father Slept In by Jason Sobelman
SLS : I have seen a couple episodes of Lizard Lick Towing. No?
Well, I traveled across two states to hear a Southern Preacher, because that is as close as he would get to the abyss that is my current residency . God bless you Pastor David Terrell.
Poetry
Essays
