Category: Poetry

SLS- my grand father was a miner, then a railroad man before he left that life to live in Erie Pa and chase my grand mother. My wife grandmother lived in West Virginia where her father was shot dead on...

Mr. Martin needs no detailed Southern Legitimacy Statement, he has graced our website before today but I do want to include this: “I am a Southerner by birth and tradition. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1933. I send these pieces...

SLS I was born, like everyone else, in a particular place.  Alabama:  not just a Southern state, but The Heart of Dixie, where vowels are long and round.  I spent my early years in the woods (without a gun) searching for answers to how the...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South Carolina Low Country in a swamp so think that airplanes had to shift into low gear to fly over it. I retrieved the bones of Quentin Compson from the...

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  I’d like to tell you about the poorly shrouded frost-burnt parrot carcass stashed in a friend’s grandmother’s freezer, but it’s not my story to share. I do tell on my housemates’ haints all the time, though, because...

My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born at James Walker Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, NC to a Southern father and a ex-pat mother (Pennsylvania Dutch from Tulpehocken Township). Grew up at Carolina Beach, where except for Sundays we went barefoot or in...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My southern roots are sown in the coastal island of St. John’s, just off of the beautiful peninsula known as Charleston, South Carolina. Though born in Harlem, New York – Charleston is the birthplace of both my...

When asked to read to celebrate my new book of memoirs, I let the audience enter the cubicle from where the work came. I told them: I’ll celebrate with you by telling you what I know, how it is with...

Southern Legitimacy Statement:  I’ve swallowed moonshine and lived to brag about it; escaped a copperhead’s randy tongue; ridden a tobacco setter like some rogue elephant; eaten fresh-caught bluegill at dawn; been romanced by a choir of whippoorwills; and fallen asleep amid...

Southern Legitimacy Statement river town sleepy town cajuncreole spicy foods filé gumbo sultry air pop guns china berry trees joie de vivre laissez bon temps rouler

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There is a warmness to the South. Beyond the obvious, the steamy summers and Goddawful humidity, its native peoples don’t hesitate to pass the offering plate for Ms Jenny’s nephew who came down with a dreadful ailment...

SLS: Though I was not born or raised in the South, I have lived in Georgia, Texas, and in North Carolina, while I was in the U.S. Army. I may not know much, but I know enough to never refer...