Heather Adams “Warmer Over Here” [flash fiction]
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Honey, my southern roots go way back - at least four generations of my family have been born and raised in western North Carolina.
Ashley Fields “Legacy” [flash fiction]
SLS:
I never thought I was very southern until my neighbor from California came over early one morning. We were going through a "lifestyle change," and she had arrived to drag me out for an early morning jog. She went into conniptions when she saw what I was eating - a country ham biscuit dipped in red eye gravy. Cholesterol, calories, carbs, oh my! It hit me that I was southern through and through when I very calmly told her "Something's bound to get me eventually," got another biscuit and a helping of grits smothered in butter, and ate to my heart's content.
Mark Vogel: Poetry: Three Powerful Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mark Vogel has lived in the back of a Blue Ridge holler for the past twenty two years with ducks, cats, dogs, horses, and his family. He teaches English at Appalachian State University.
Craig Owens: Two Poems
SLS: I used to joke that if you looked in the dictionary under Appalachian, you would find my picture. My father was a coal miner, one of the most recognizable Appalachian occupations, for more than 35 years before lung cancer claimed him. My mother worked in a textile factory, yet another typical Appalachian occupation, until her hands gave out and she was forced to retire. I am a combination of the veins of coal and the threads of cloth that hold Appalachia together, but my parents demanded something different for me and from me. I now teach English, I write poetry and fiction, I travel as often as I can, and I am Appalachian through and through. I might not be the first image that comes to mind of an Appalachian man, but I definitely am Appalachian. I take some pride in that, and, if truth be told, in surprising people too.
“Pretty, Black, Shiny Shoes” by Dean Stracener
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in 1934 in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama in a house that didn't have indoor plumbing. I was only seven-years-old when we moved to Mobile, AL. Except for a few months in Fla. and a few weeks in Saint Louis, I have always lived in Alabama. I always loved to write, even when I was a kid. I was married for eleven years and divorced, married for 32 years and widowed. I am quite well and happy.
“Not Nihilistic” by Pete Armetta
SOUTHERN STATEMENT
I'm a Native New Yorker who's now Southern. When I came here I didn't think it'd get a hold on me, but it did. Living in Charlottesville, VA via too many other places to count, it's now a life of mountains and big sky and dogwoods and hawks. Of back roads and wood- burning stoves. Of bourbon and mint from the garden in May and swimming in the river in August. It's the long talks with old-timers of how their descendants were run out of what's now Shenandoah National Park-mountain people getting by as moonshiners. And it's standing on the grounds of Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, with the columns of its Rotunda and his ghost and magnolias and people from the world over. Just like me. It's the slow pace of living that's tamed me. And I never planned it.
“Our Nativity – 1970” by Dawn Wilson
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My sister used to experiment on me. At the age of twelve, she taught me how to do a Southern accent--and I got stuck. I couldn't get rid of it. The phone rang, back in the day when you couldn't get rid of telemarketers, so my sister started making me answer it with my fake Scarlett O'Hara oh be still mah beatin' heart accent--and she didn't stop laughing for three years.
Suzannah Gilman: Three Poems
True, I was born in California and grew up in Florida, which is such a melting pot that it’s not really the south—not unless you’re in Clewiston or Macclenny or Bithlo or someplace like that-- but I'm still a southern girl. I say “Bless her heart” after I say something unflattering about someone (I won’t admit to gossip), and that’s about as southern as you can get. My legitimacy honorable mentions: I had a Mawmaw and Pawpaw, I used to say “anyways,” and I still say “yall.”
Online and On Time
I don’t know what that means but it sounds good — doesn’t it? On time. For a literary journal, “on time” could be anyone’s schedule. If the journal is affiliated with an academic funding source, on time probably correlates with...
Michael Diebert: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My parents are native Californians who moved to Tennessee before I was born. I married a Pennsylvanian. I can’t abide sweet tea, sweet desserts, egg salad, or chitlins. I never developed much of an accent, apart from “y’all” (with an apostrophe). The fervor of Civil War re-enactors and NASCAR fans has always puzzled me. Nevertheless. Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia: I have lived here all my life, and I am as much Southern as I am anything else. The South, for me, is a James Agee summer night: lightning bugs in a jar, invisible chirping crickets, everything familiar and settled, the world at relative, temporary peace. But the South is also a state of mind, a sort of vigilance, a waiting—and a fecund, green place where the strangeness and play of poems is made possible.
Deb Jellett “Southerness”
I used to say I was from the South, but not "of" it. I think I just had to find the right kind of Southerness.
Zacc Dukowitz “Ernesto and the Mule”
Southern Legitimacy Statement*
I have shot containers of propane with my grandfather's 12 gauge and yodeled with delight at the plume of flame that erupted into the night like a spume of blood from the skull of a Foreigner. I have walked often and barefeeted, and never been a stranger to hardship. I have thought of Andrew Jackson while alone in the darkness of my dead lover's room, and been comforted.
*featured on the Dead Mule's Facebook page
Rena McClure Taylor “Onions Can Make You Cry”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: We only eat Vidalia onions.
Brigette Steel:
SLS: A native of the Pacific Northwest, I lived in north Florida for eighteen months as a teenager. I was introduced to cornbread dressing, boiled peanuts, and beaches you can actually swim in.
Poetry
Essays
