Jennifer Lobaugh – Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have lived my entire barefoot-walking, gravy-eating, Johnny-Cash-loving life in the great state of Oklahoma. My grandpa picked cotton, my dad raised pigs; I guess I chose a little different direction by going to school for literature and languages. Sure, I’ve left Oklahoma a few times, but I always come back to the home of Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie, where people say “y’all” unironically and the sunsets are actually breathtaking; where Sooner football is a way of life, and my sweet tea addiction is somehow socially acceptable.
Shenan Hahn – Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Born in Northern VA, spent a childhood split between full-time living there and part-time living in the Shenandoah Valley, and all of my college years in Harrisonburg, VA (also in the Valley). Did not fully realize the extent of the "Southernness" of my mannerisms until faced with my husband (then boyfriend) who had spent many of his formative years in Connecticut, and would often needle me about the accent that slipped out with certain words. The following conversation occurred one day: "Please. 'Y'all' isn't a Southern phrase. Maybe it's associated with the South, but it's just a common phrase. Everyone says it." "Um, no, they don't." "Yes they do! Who doesn't say 'y'all'?" "People from above the Mason-Dixon line." "Seriously??" "...Have you ever actually been up north?" "Yes, I have, thank you very much. Wait, what else do they not do?" Things that were concluded to, apparently, not be part of the northern experience (news to me!): grits, scrapple, okra (I know okra doesn't grow in the desert, but there are really places where okra is just not eaten?), the phrase "ain't nothin' doin'," getting to miss school for the opening day of trout season, and calling Jefferson Davis "Jeff" Davis, "as if we all knew the guy."
Ann Fox Chandonnet – “Sapphic” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My husband and I retired to Vale, North Carolina, five years ago. After more than three decades in Alaska, we wanted to find a spot to grow tomatoes and corn. We learned that digging into red dirt is like digging into concrete; I am now known for breaking shovels. Gardening in Southern weather, I also realized that my knees can actually sweat—a fact I was ignorant of before living here.
Scott Owens – “I Would Not Deny It” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
To Be a Wrestler
Dusty from his last defeat
he rises from the mat,
screams defiance, spins
with flair around the ring,
grapples whatever dares
stand before him, runs,
jumps, flexes, flings
his body against the ropes,
locks legs, arms,
heads into submission.
Victorious he stands
in the center of the ring,
arm upraised, head
thrown back in laughter,
awaits the next challenger,
sees him, seizes him
by the throat, swaps chop
for chop, stroke for stroke,
staggers, falls, is raised
to the sky, dropped to the mat,
sat upon for the count
of one two three,
loses, leaves, already
planning his return, knowing
defeat is never final,
knowing tomorrow he can start
again, knowing even death
or disbarment demands
only another mask,
another outrageous name.
Richard Peabody – “Race Poem in Three Parts” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My mom grew up in Lexington, NC, I spent my summers down there. My dad grew up in VA. Now I've lived in VA for 14 years now. I love Kale. I worked on the COSMEP Book Van eons ago based in Carrboro, NC. I make sweet potatoes in hollowed out orange cups every Thanksgiving.
Rose Auslander – “Hurricane Irene” – A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’m a Louisianan, once removed, from Shreveport—where sweating in the sun in the brambles behind my step-grandma’s backyard, gathering the wild strawberries that grew there, and stealing a few from my sweaty hands, from the batches meant for jam, was the most delicious thing ever.
kenneth ennis – The Mule and the Parachute
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm a redneck thats seen and done much in my life. Telling stories about what I've experienced sort of lets me go back ever so briefly to my youth. I've also found that the stories and tall tales effect other folks the same way. If you recognize yourself in my stories thats even better.
Sara Amis – God of the Marching Teddy Bears
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sara Amis has lived in Georgia her entire life, except when she moved to Chicago for two weeks. She currently resides in Statesboro on a dirt road off a four-lane highway.
Wayne Scheer – Mysterious Ways
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm a y'all guys kind of Southerner. I was raised in Brooklyn, New York and lived in Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia for the past forty years. I'm the kind of mixed breed who might order a side of grits with a pastrami on rye, but I refuse to eat pizza with a knife and fork.
Ed Laird – The Merchants of Mayhem
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was always conscious that I was Southern, even while living in a foreign country, Southern California, a land of perpetual sunshine and brilliantly white teeth. But my roots were brought to my attention rather dramatically when there was a discussion among friends of what we would like for dinner. I suggested catfish and hushpuppies. "What are hushpuppies?" they said with all seriousness. On the way home I said to my wife, "I don't think I can live among people who don't appreciate hushpuppies. I think it's time we go home." And we did. Sometimes it's as simple as knowing what you should be eating for dinner; sometimes it's as simple as knowing where you belong.
John Tarkov – Mule Heaven
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Some of the best days of my life were spent in the state of Virginia.
Roy Jeffords – Saturday Afternoon
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Southern Legitimacy Statement
I was born in the lowcountry of South Carolina, and have lived in the South ever since. I lived about ten miles from Darlington International Raceway, the Grandaddy of Them All on the Nascar circuit, and grew up rooting for Cale Yarborough. While still a child I learned to eat souse meat, hog jowls, hogs head cheese, pickled pork feet, and chitterlings. I was in college before I met a male who hadn’t been hunting or anyone who didn’t eat grits.
I graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, SC, and a great source of pride for my alma mater is that Citadel cadets fired the first shot in the War of Northern Aggression. Similarly, a great source of pride for my home state is that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. While earning an English degree from The Citadel, I was fortunate to take a Southern Lit course from the greatest professor ever to teach the subject, and I’ve had a love for it ever since. I learned to appreciate not just our richness of geography and culture, but also our richness of beauty and spirit, and to love them right along with all those things that make Yankees laugh at us.
My wife and I have been in Texas for the last three years, and it’s a little different. They think tea should be unsweet, shagging is something you do in the bedroom, and barbeque is a slab of beef covered with cooked down ketchup. Other than that, I guess they’re okay. And, even if they’re a little different flavor of Southern, it beats living with a bunch of Yankees!
Jeff Baker – Interviewer in the Dust
Southern Legitimacy Statement: SLS: I was born in Tuscaloosa, AL, and spent summers with kin in either Arkansas or Mississippi. Attended the University of Mississippi & worked at The Oxford American magazine. I drop peanuts in my Cokes. When my relatives say "ain't" it never sounds wrong. I have heard my uncle construct a sentence that contains only articles when referring to how deep in the woods his coon dogs took him: "Way back off down in there." I like fried frog legs (they do not "taste like chicken" --- they taste like frog legs.) I now live in Seattle, where the tea served in restaurants is horrible, and the waitresses do not know what "unsweet" means. I spend most of my time straightnin' the curves, flatnin’ the hills. Someday the mountain might get me, but the law never will.
Adam Lambert – Old Man Dan
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I currently live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was born and raised on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in western North Carolina.
Poetry
Essays
