Category: Poetry

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Suzan Phillips : 2010 Poetry

Suzan Phillips Southern Legitimacy Statement Ma-Ma would take Bo and me digging for sassafras roots in the woods next door. She would boil the roots and then we would drink the hot "tea" 'cause Aint Essie said it would keep ya reglar."She stopped a horse from bleedin', ya know? Tom Waters brought his horse over, pourin' blood outa his neck. Aint Essie went 'round the back of the house and when she come back, that horse 'ad stopped bleedin'.” We dug potatoes, too. She had on her lipstick and floral print dress. As soon as we came out of the garden, she put her heels back on - black patent leather - and put the potatoes on to boil. "We havin' old timey pataters and lemon marengue pie." She watched wrestling while she ironed the sheets. Then she took me over to Aint Correll's. We were going to get my wart taken off. I was five. We drove round a dirt driveway up to a little house and an old man came out. Flowers everywhere and trees and a bench swing hanging on a rusty old swing set. They talked a minute and then he gently asked me to go sit with him on the swing. He held a leaf in his hand, twirling it round between his finger and thumb. "Suzan, this hyere's a peach leaf. Come off 'at peach tree righttare." Silence. "D'you b'lieve I can take off that wort from your hand, thare?" "Yessir" "Well, hold out chur hand and lemme just rub this leaf hyere on yer wort, like this. See. Now, when you wake up tomorra, yur wort's gonna be gone. D'you b'lieve me, Suzan?" "Yessir." My wort was gone the next day. I think my southern legitimacy is evident!
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Three Poems by Thomas Alan Holmes

Where I’m From (My Southern Legitimacy Statement) after George Ella Lyons I am from a back porch, from Coca-Cola and accidental parallel fingertip slits from my curiosity of discovering our first air conditioner’s condenser coil. I am from the closetless, socketless, south-facing bedroom. I am from the chinaberry and the redbud, from the mimosa, the looper caterpillars dangling in fine, translucent strands from its branches. I am from first Sunday in May and first Sunday in June and close reading of scripture, from Byrum and Welton and Portis. I am from working by the job and not the hour and from finding the next thing to do, From “cry me a handful so I can feed the chickens” and “washed in the blood.” I am from the belief that “born again” is a change of character and a political liability. I'm from Cullman County and Morgan County, almond pound cake and corn meal dressing. From Uncle William’s fishing too close to the locks when the TVA decided to release water from the hydroelectric dam, Aunt Kate’s refusing to try the home-canned pickles until only one jar was left and her crying about it, my parents’ eloping across the state line to Iuka, Mississippi, on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1956. I am from the middle kitchen cabinet drawer, below the medications and above the dishtowels, in an envelope box of snapshots with edges worn as hammer handles, smooth as seasoned skillets, frayed as pockets.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

A Tribute to Shann Palmer by Debra DuPree Williams

Southern Legitimacy Statement Hey, yall. I was born in the Heart of Dixie, Lower Alabama, or LA, as the natives like to call it. I cut my teeth on my Granny's lard biscuits and drooled over her blackberry cobblers and egg custard and sweet potato pies. Cornbread was fried, made to look like little golden doughnuts, hole in the middle and all. I've picked cotton (made $1.10 for a whole day's work, I was only 6), blackberries, peas and butterbeans, and I've gone to the mayhaw groves where they laid old worn-out sheets on the dirt beneath the trees. They shook the trees until the red-orange little berries fell to the ground. Best danged jelly you will ever want to eat! The Peanut Festival and the Boll Weevil Monument are part of my vocabulary. All night Gospel sings and Sacred Harp sings were two of my favorite things. Catching fireflies in an old Mason jar was a typical summer eve's activity. I've eaten scrambled eggs with pork brains, and every true southerner knows that the fish roe was the best part of the fish! Being southern does have its perks, now, doesn't it?
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Shann Palmer Chapbook “Skip Tracing Angels” or “Uttering and Publishing”

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Houston, Texas January 4, 1950 when there were so many babies born my mother was on a cot out in the hall. I was premature and not expected to thrive so was placed in an incubator with another baby, a boy. My name was supposed to be "Sharon Rose" but when the woman with the clipboard came to my unconscious mother, my grandmother told he my name was to be "Sharon.....and...". I am grateful to this day my name became Sharon Ann and not Sharon And. I later shortened it to Shann for what I thought were good reasons. We weren't poor, we were genteel, though sometimes before payday I remember eating cereal with water, giving my dad babysitting money I made so he could buy gas (and it was cheap then). I could go on about moving to Virginia in 1971 after attending the University of Arizona, but I plan to tell that story in a different way when I figure it all out.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

River Haven by Pepper Smith

For my southern legitimacy statement, I'd say, my name is Pepper, which has caused me much grief living in the DC area, but made a lot of sense in my home of Mississippi, where I was born and grew up. There it was warm and unpretentious. Here it's silly and people will say things like, "what's a grown man doing with the name Pepper?"
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Three Poems by Charles Edward Wright

I know that my Southern legitimacy may be marginal, having lived my whole life in a border state, but thanks to my North Carolinian grandmother, my father’s family name was Bubba, and we only ever vacationed in Morehead City. And I reckon that my hometown of Indian Head, MD had adequately Southern sensibilities. I am hopeful that my SLS effectively expresses my honest affection for the people amongst whom I grew up. Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was raised on a narrow neck of land between the Potomac River and the Mattawoman Creek, in a town where the eggs were never poached but the venison very likely had been.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Poems by D.M Aderibigbe

MY SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, that is the southernmost part of Nigeria, and I've always had predilection for the Southern part of any nation. I love New Mexico and Texas in America. I'm a proud southerner of the world.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Four Poems by Robert Wooten

My southern legitimacy has oft been disputed, and for this reason, I really am at a loss for words. If you can believe it, I was told "you sound like a New Yorker" and (mis)identified as the descendent of "carpetbaggers"—false, false. Perhaps there was a bed switch. Anyway these poems have pleased. And I have an MFA from Alabama
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Two Poems by Hattie Wilcox

River Glistens river glistens and flows in my direction bathes me in the peace of its rippling trees lean in to canopy the shelters beavers have built against its banks a lawn of insects hover and hunt birds twitter and...
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