Raymond Berthelot :: Three Poems ::
And of course I’m a Southern writer geographically, and socially I’d imagine. Somebody has got to be on the outside, and if I am to be out, I’d rather be South of out. Three Poems Absences We’ll cook the black...
K. L. Johnson :: All Saints Day Savannah; In the Sandhills; Walking With my Ex’s Mother ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m an army brat, but grew up in South Carolina, the state that’s too small to be a republic and too big to be an insane asylum according to the politician James Louis Pettigru. I tend to...
Ray Whitaker :: Three Poems for October ::
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: After moving west, I find that I to this day, compare things out here in Big Sky country to standards set by having lived in North Carolina for a lot of my life…. truly I do...
Michael Lee Johnson :: Halloween Poems ::
Not sure what a Southern Legitimacy Statement is but – in fact I lived in Titusville, Florida and worked at Cape Canaveral between 1966-1969. I also returned after 10 yrs. in exile in Canada the Vietnam War & lived in...
Matthew Johnson :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am not Southern by birth, though the South has become an adopted home, having been a resident of Greensboro, NC for a few years now. I carry many of my upstate New York and New England...
Bill Pendergraft :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a sixth-generation North Carolinian. I was a high school English teacher in Burgaw, NC and years later an environmental writer/producer who depended on major environmental organizations for my paycheck, although Southerners were sometimes seen as...
Joyce Compton Brown :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having grown up in a little mill town hanging balanced between old family farms and local factories, I feel eligible for membership in the Dead mule school,. My family held on to its German American roots and...
Carol Parris Krauss :: A Four Iron for Bashing Brains & the curls against the back of her neck ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have eaten liver mush, frog legs, and gator bites. Worn orange overalls and purchased with $2.00, tiger stamped bills at Clemson football games. I have walked the swinging bridge at Grandfather Mountain and known that I...
stella graham-landau :: just be present ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: i have a snarly relationship with the south. i was born in richmond moved to south carolina back to richmond then north carolina back to richmond stint in ohio back to richmond. always here in spite of...
Karen Lozinski :: Directions Defy Horizons ::
Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Is geographic location enough in this instance…? I guess for me, it’s going to have to suffice. I’m from generations of hardcore New Yorkers. The city of my birth, most of my education, and my...
Sam Barbee :: “A Dead-On Toss”, “Generous Gods” and “Tiny Dancers”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and given away at birth; raised and educated; married and divorced; defiled and defined, and churched, in North Carolina. Southern writers such as Flanner O’Conner and James Dickey molded my fiction and poetry. As...
Jerry Hogan :: “Bright Light,” “Reconcile,” and “Setting the Bar” ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Too often, our Native American past has been ignored or left out of Southern history. Here in Fayetteville, Arkansas we have a long connection to the Cherokee Nation. From 1839, when the John Benge detachment on the...
Jane Blanchard :: pluff mud ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen...
Alan May :: The Boy and the Monster ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Central Heights in northwest Alabama, and I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville. I have never been outside of the south for more than a few days at a stretch. I was 25 before...
Malcolm Glass :: The Last Time He Tried ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Florida. And that certainly doesn’t count. Surrounded by rich Yankees for twenty-some-odd years, I had no idea what the South was about. But I came to Tennessee sixty years ago and went to...
John Riley :: Five Truly Incredible Poems ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: After I listened to Sinatra singing “The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” earlier today and remembering how much I liked it as a kid, I thought about how the song had come into my life. My...
Joshua Edds :: Time ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in West Virginia but have called the Carolinas home for the last 16 years. Time I shot a doe as she stood by her fawn A yearling born in the spring The fawn looked...
Brianna Corley : Omnipotence ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: In the forgotten parts of Louisiana, where there are more trees than swamp, my great grandfather really did put snapping turtles in his cattle gaps— much to my mother’s and aunt’s horror. Omnipotence Scooter Ray’s pawpaw filled the...
Megan Hutchinson:: Cat Head Biscuits ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Huntington, WV and raised in a little, coal-dusted town along the Ohio River–hailed “the Southernmost Point of Ohio,” in fact–I never felt like an “Ohioan.” When you think of Ohio, you probably imagine silos and...
George Bandy :: Newport News ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family moved to Hampton Roads. My dad escaped a life in...
Andy Betz :: Now I Have Two ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. Now I Have Two The first, I call...
Lydia Yawn :: Letter to My Niece, in Mt. Vernon, Georgia ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Vidalia, Georgia; I studied creative writing in Valdosta, Georgia, , and now I’m on the hunt for the most authentic southern sweet tea in Boston, MA. Letter to My Niece, in...
Terrence Sykes :: The Gospel According to Fireflies ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I fear that my complete listing of southern legitimacy would crash the cosmos & petunias so I shall HENCEFORTHWITH condense – I was born a coal miner’s son in the coal hollers of southwestern Virginia & as...
Clayton Walker :: euthanasia ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Refusing the confederate conscript, the men of Winston County, Alabama were given a choice to join the confederate army or be killed. Several men, including my great great grandfather, refused to join, were jailed, and minutes before...
Greg Stidham :: Mississippi in Spring
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Am I legitimate? Well, my parents led me to believe so. But legitimately “southern”? I was born in Indiana, lived in Ohio until age five, when we moved to Atlanta when it was still a town–pre-Falcons, pre-Underground...
Poetry
Essays
