May Jordan : Poetry!
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I went through the Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina in 1969. I married a Texan from Brownsville, and you cannot get much further south than that. We had a hound named “Dog,” and a...
Robert Klein Engler : Poetry!
NIGHT TRAIN TO BENARES when the oily skinned boy offers me some nuts from the bowl he covers with his headband I have to take them like it or not he is thankful but can’t say so in English I...
Carol Poster : Poetry!
Southern Legitimacy Statement : Not a dead mule, but is a dead mule deer close enough? Shapes of Dust Through breaks in the billowing dirt road dust, a shape ahead appears a fallen girl, knees bent, arm outstretched, head turned aside,...
Eve Lyons: A Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am, as always, a born in New Orleans, raised in South Texas woman. Currently living in Boston. Southern Comfort is a Dangerous Thing “It is a sad time for the heart.” – Gary Soto Southern Comfort is...
Pris Campbell: A Prose Poem Memoir
My Southern Statement I was born in South Carolina where I loved to snack on barbecue sandwiches with cold slaw on top and fried green tomatoes. My great grandfather fought in the War Between the States (if I said Civil...
Tom Sheehan: A Poem
My legitimacy statement says, “I have appeared in your magazine, have read and vacationed in NC, and once worked in Tennessee.” Cold Night’s Dark Advances And always it is this Gift-giver, this woman from midnight’s the other side, this darkness...
Pepper Smith: Other People’s Brights
Southern Legitimacy Statement: First off, my name is Pepper. Nuff said. Secondly, I’m from Mississippi. But to continue… in the summers I would visit my Mamaw who made “sun tea” by putting a jar with filled with water, tea bags, and...
Barbara Conrad: Fish Camp, Indian River 1956
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I swear on a stack of Bibles I’m from the south. To be specific, I’m a Tarheel born and a Tarheel bred and when I die I’ll be a Tarheel dead. I can still twirl my baton...
Brenda Butka: April, Taylor Hollow
Southern Legitimacy Statement: So. My husband once bought four hams from a man in Kentucky who can no longer enter his hams in the State Fair because no one else can win. Husband sold one ham to a psychiatrist friend,...
Richard Weaver : Mule Toe
My Official Highfalutin’ Southern Legitimacy Statement I was born on the same day that George Armstrong Custer died, though “Autie”, as he called his adopted self, and I never exchanged letters. But that don’t make me a soldier or...
Ruth Heinold: Choose Your Songs With Care
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Although I was born in Cincinnati, the South has been home since 1961. I’d be 100 years old this April and this poem is published in the spirit of my work left behind for my daughter to...
Matthew Borczon: Three Poems
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...
Herbert Woodward Martin: Poems
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...
Poetry
Essays
