No good Southern writing is complete without a dead mule. Established 1996. New issues on the 15th of every month.

Category: Poetry

Kevin Brown :: Three Poems ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I currently live in Nashville (questionable as to the Southerness these days, but I’ll still go with it), and I’ve grown up and spent most of my life in Tennessee (outside Chattanooga; the Northeast corner; born in...

Poetry

Grey Brown :: Black Irish, The Second Coming, My Oldest Sister Gets Married ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Rocky Mount, NC, home to Melton’s Barbeque and the Tar River. One Saturday, my family took the ski boat out on the Tar River, but never again. When you swam in the Tar,...

Poetry

Landon Whitley :: Three Poems ::

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATMENT: Landon Whitley was born in North Carolina in 1996, just like The Dead Mule. Over twenty seven years, he saw Union County turn from the home of duck-tape bandaids to the county with the highest average income...

Poetry

P S Bryant :: Three Poems ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Florence, SC, right next to where the United States Air Force dropped a dud atomic bomb due to negligence. I saw the crater when I was 6. It was hauntingly large. The neighborhood...

Poetry

Carl Harris :: Three Poems ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement:I am a queer black southern writer who focuses on the liminal spaces of identities that are often classed as other. I was born and raised in Union, South Carolina. This region is often noted as the foothills...

Poetry

Jack J. B. Hutchens :: Rodeo | How to Rope a Cow | The Last Friday Night ::

As far as a Southern Legitimacy Statement, I’m not sure how to begin. I’m a red-legged Jayhawker abolitionist Kansan. As a descendent (in Spirit) of John Brown, I never thought of myself as Northern or Southern, but in the In-Between....

Poetry

Joe Bisicchia :: Three Very Fine Poems ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement, it is what it is. Growing up in South Philly, the rest of the world was a world away. North Philly was as far as Quebec. But then I went to North Philly. Met the good people,...

Poetry

Jefferson Fortner :: A Honky-Tonk Epiphany | My Grandfather’s Garden | Wine, Women, and Song ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a lifelong resident of North Carolina, as were my parents, and my grandparents, and great-grandparents, reaching back to well before the American Revolution. It must be admitted, however, that there were a few immigrants from...

Poetry

Biff Rushton :: Where 42 Crosses The Sabine | George Daniel ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In early 1835 my fourth great grandfather, John Nolan and his brother James, fled the Tithe War in Ireland and arrived upon the fringes of revolution in Texas. A little over a year later, Texas had become...

Poetry

Jessica Sampley :: The Cowcumber Poem | South Florida: the lover driving alone sees Indian River fruit | At the Mill Creek Dam, Carbon Hill, Alabama—the Night Jay Almost Died ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I open my mouth and the South comes out. I grew up listening to my mawmaw’s stories and trying to come to terms with the beauty, complexities, and dualities of growing up in rural Alabama, and I...

Poetry

William Heath :: Preacher Knox | Jail, No Bail | Tales from Liberty ::

Southern Literature: For five years I taught American literature and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, the favorite school of the antebellum aristocracy in the South; I am the author of an award-winning novel about the civil rights...

Poetry

Richard Collins :: Cement Buddha and The Past Is Not Past ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement My first two wives (it didn’t work out; it didn’t work out) were from Southern California, where I grew up, but the third (the charm) is from Louisiana. Her Cajun father – who spoke no English until...

Poetry

Marsha Owens :: Boarded Up ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Richmond, VA, I’ve made it my forever home. My paternal grandpa was a waterman on the Chesapeake Bay, and to this day, I’m a seafood snob. I married an ex-Amishman to whom all things Southern...

Category: Poetry

Kevin Brown :: Three Poems ::

Grey Brown :: Black Irish, The Second Coming, My Oldest Sister Gets Married ::

Landon Whitley :: Three Poems ::

P S Bryant :: Three Poems ::

Carl Harris :: Three Poems ::

Jack J. B. Hutchens :: Rodeo | How to Rope a Cow | The Last Friday Night ::

Joe Bisicchia :: Three Very Fine Poems ::

Jefferson Fortner :: A Honky-Tonk Epiphany | My Grandfather’s Garden | Wine, Women, and Song ::

Biff Rushton :: Where 42 Crosses The Sabine | George Daniel ::

Jessica Sampley :: The Cowcumber Poem | South Florida: the lover driving alone sees Indian River fruit | At the Mill Creek Dam, Carbon Hill, Alabama—the Night Jay Almost Died ::

William Heath :: Preacher Knox | Jail, No Bail | Tales from Liberty ::

Richard Collins :: Cement Buddha and The Past Is Not Past ::

Marsha Owens :: Boarded Up ::

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