River Sin by Shelle Stormoe
SLS: I was born in Arkansas, and I'll probably die there too. These days, I teach at an Arkansas university, in a small town on the edge of the Ozarks. Some day, I'll move for good to Newton County, still as deep as the backwoods get, and revert to a life governed by seasons instead of clocks.
Peaches by Wanda Stephens
My Southernhoodness may be snatched, and I apologize to the collards aficionados, but I did not like collards during my childhood. Maybe I was adopted, born up in Yankeedom perhaps in…Saginaw, Michigan. Saginaw popped into my head because of Lefty Frizzel’s song.
When I became twenty-one, I decided I should try collards again and began scarfing them down by the bowlful. A favorite hangout became Bubba’s Barbeque Buffet where I found all the collards and fatback I could eat. Now, I can say, honestly, I love collards. Though I got off to a slow start, I put “Dixie” in the CD player and take up a fork.
Ode to Parents in “The” Fall by Theresa Lacey
Southern Legitimacy Statement
Both my parents hail from the South. When they married, my mother's family called it a "mixed" marriage because she was from Alabama, and he was a Texan. Almost a different country, as far as they were concerned. I was born in the middle of a blizzard in Fairbanks, Alaska, the daughter of a father who was in the Army Air Corps. Alaska was then just a territory, but by virtue of my parents being southerners, and military people, I was born a Southerner. A misplaced Southerner, but a bona fide one. When my grandfather died on his farm in Alabama, we moved to the farm to help grandmother, who wanted to keep to her farming ways. It was there I learned how to make grits, how to hitch up a mule, how to pick cotton and dig potatoes. I was never very good at milking the cows, so my morning chore was gathering the eggs--and I was afraid of the pecking hens, but too afraid of my father's wrath, NOT to do this. We had an outhouse until my father built a real, in-house bathroom, and my momma got to have the first flushing rights. I learned from an uncle how to find the stars, from an aunt how to make perfect sweet tea, from my grandmother how to "put up" canned fruits and vegetables, and from my momma how to use plants and trees for medicine. My great-uncle offered to teach us kids how to make homemade wine, but this never happened. And from my father and brother, I learned how to play chess, hunt and fish. I guess that all makes me Southern, and I feel real pity for people who don't understand anything I've written here.
Morning by Thomas McGauley
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Raised by mudfish on the St. Johns River near Welaka, Florida.
Savannah Ghost Tour by David Massengill
SLS: It's about the South--and it's based on my trip to the South.
The Patriarch by Carla Cummins
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT:
My family arrived in the Isle of Wight, Virginia, in the early 1600s and decided they were here to stay. Fortunes being what they were, it wasn't long after before they headed down to Carolina and set up camp on the Black River, where they've pretty much been ever since.
I grew up drinking tea from mason jars and sitting on porches, catching lightning bugs and dropping my r's. I can recite all the books of the Bible and sing all the verses to "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder." My first kiss was to a boy with a pickup truck and Cherokee blood in his veins, who smelled of Drakkar Noir and tobacco.
I keep bacon grease in a coffee can under my kitchen sink, fry my cornbread, and ensure my luck by eating black-eyed peas and greens on New Year's Day.
I may now live in Australia, but the South is the home I always carry with me.
Acorns by Nicole Yurcaba
SLS: a half-Ukrainian redneck poet, backwoods feminist, farm hand, adjunct instructor of English-- basically a Jill-of-all-trades-mistress-to-none hailing from Mathias, WV.
“An Old Man The Night Before His Death” by Colby Swift
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
In the southern summers, my childhood friend/neighbor and I kept ourselves busy. If we weren't following our mutts up the backroads to the corner grocer for a ham sandwich and Mountain Dew, we were in the woods behind our houses, stalking down squirrels with our Model 10 Daisies. On one such day we happened across a copperhead snake coiled up in the underbrush. My friend retrieved his father who, equipped with a hoe, followed us to the snake's bed and beheaded the thing. He dumped the body in a tin trash can behind the house for fear that the dogs would eat the remains, and me and my friend spent the rest of that day daring each other to open the trash can's lid and look in at the headless carcass. As I recall, neither of us was brave enough to do it.
Educated Tina by T L Sherwood
My SLS is like a country song. At 17, I moved to Texas, got married, moved to New York, got divorced and now I think about my exes, and Texas, but not always. Sometimes I think about the pool at the La Quinta hotel next to the Kettle restaurant where my husband and I used to eat pecan pie.
Alan Reynolds: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and grew up in Asheville and later lived in the south of New England before moving on to the south of England and the south of Amsterdam, none of which are The South, but many of my poems about The South because I still think about and dream in Southern. I dream about The South, especially the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. And about cleaning dirt off windshields and rust off exhaust pipes with the RC Cola left over after drinking half of it to keep away carsickness after gobbling all the moon pies.
Berrien C. Henderson: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’ve lived in the South all my life—southeast Georgia, in fact–and currently live so far in the sticks that the turkey buzzards feed on the other turkey buzzards that have lost a vehicular battle of one sort or another.
Charlotte Hamrick: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
The summer I was fifteen I was sitting on the pier at the local swimming hole waiting for friends when I was approached by an older boy. He asked where I lived and when I replied, "Down the road a piece." he asked, "Is that near yonder?" I knew immediately he wasn't from the south.
Robert Cory: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I confess to the following: a) learned to eat (and like) grits, biscuits and ham gravy at a little cafe on the town square in Fayetteville, AR. b) one of my favorite all time authors - Barry Hannah, whose characters are The South, to wit: "We invented gin and tonic." c) I still use the term "Y'all"; d) I talked to a man in Daytona, FL. in the early 70's who claimed he could limp on both legs; e) in the poem “Just Past Midnight” I was the only Yankee on board.
Poetry
Essays
