Art Heifetz: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Came to Richmond in 1977 as a damned Yankee, that is one who decided to stay. Gradually lost my New York accent and started saying “youse all.” Told my clients that my people were F.F.V. and they shook their heads earnestly. “Don’t believe I ever heard of Heifetz.” “Just kidding, ma’am,” I replied. “ We’re from North Carolina.”
Tobi Cogswell: Two Poems
SLS - Tobi Cogswell began kindergarten in Dallas. Even though it was many years ago, she still remembers her first dog was a "Heinz 57" named Sam Finkelstein the Third Rifkin. She remembers a family outing to the zoo where a lion peed on her best friend Betsy who lived down the street, and eating chicken fried steak at the Surrey, in a shopping center where a Wil Wrights was freestanding in a corner of the parking lot. Today she has good friends in Texas, and is pleased to see at least one of them in an earlier issue of this journal.
Danny Collier: Poems
Here is my SLS:
I grew up in Memphis. I am a direct descendant of the Georgia Tann scandal. Once, I rode through Weakley County in the passenger seat of a decrepit MG roadster, unaware that the passenger seat was not bolted to the car. My grandfather hunted deer from his mid-century modern breakfast table, stepping to the porch when it was time to take the shot. I know the location of the capital city of the kingdom of Skullbonia. I have almost finished a book-length manuscript of poems related to chickens.
Joyce Rushing: A Prose Poem
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Joyce is southern by virtue. A true friend of the Dead Mule who is finding her voice.
Six Short Works by Joyce Rushing “Dancing With Dementia”
Joyce has never published a darn thing in this world. Never thought she was a writer but knew she had some stories to tell. So she figured out how to submit with our Submittable process and we loved what we read. If you think this whole submission process is too complex, take heart. If she can do it -- so can you. You will hear more from Joyce in October in our True Stories from the South issue. These six works are Prose Poems but they are more because of the quiet dignity of their truth. They will be published in both the poetry and essay sections.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I've been married to a Mississippi boy for 54 years and lived in Mississippi for 50 years. I'm responsible for bringing 16 southern souls into the world... so far. That alone ought to be good enough for anybody.
John Lane – Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Much of my genetic material has been circulating between the blue Southern sea and the Blue Ridge for over 200 years. (My sister, an obsessive genealogist, can certify this.) A few family names: Mary Caldonia Behealer, Christopher Columbus
Bradley (“Lum”), Walter Scott Lane, Aunt Lottie Belle. will send my mother’s pinto bean recipe upon request.
June Poets
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Does being a vegetarian disqualify me from being “southern”? I have accepted grits, cornbread, okra, and ridiculously sweet iced tea, but I can’t abide collards and barbeque. I don’t have loquacious uncles spinning yarns at huge family reunions or eccentric aunties that out-butter Paula Deen. All I have is a developed love of the land as I have lived over half my life now in North Carolina. I have hiked in the Great Smokies and splashed off the Outer Banks. I have gardened in the Piedmont’s red clay and in the flat sand of the coastal plain. Elizabeth City is the fourth NC city for me, trending eastward from High Point. A remnant of the Great Dismal Swamp is in my back yard along with the Pasquotank River. They inspired these poems.
Joseph Bathanti – NC Poet Laureate
Mr. Bathanti is well known to many of us in NC. Bathanti is currently a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University where he is also Director of Writing in the Field. He is the Writer-in-Residence for the Watauga Global Community.
He was installed as the seventh North Carolina Poet Laureate on September 20, 2012, at a ceremony in Raleigh, North Carolina. During his two-year term, he will be an "Ambassador of N.C. Literature" and will remain free to create his own long-term projects. The position requires the laureate to participate in various literary activities across the state, working with "with schools, community groups, and the press." We see the two extraordinary poems here in the Dead Mule as an extension of his poetic mandate.
Mr. Bathanti has received many honors including:
The Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award (1995)
Oscar Arnold Young Award – The North Carolina Poetry Council (1997)
Carolina Novel Award – Banks Channel Books (2001)
Sherwood Anderson Award (2002)
Linda Flowers Literary Award – NC Humanities Council (2002)
Novello Literary Award (2006)
The Spokane Prize – Eastern Washington University
North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012–2014)
Ragan-Rubin Award – North Carolina English Teachers Association (2012)
*Wikipedia entry re:Joseph Bathanti. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, check his Wikipedia page for more details and a list of his publications and access links.
Statement from the Editors:
Every year, in April, the Dead Mule publishes the poet laureate of a Southern state as the centerpiece of its Poetry Issue. Helen Losse established this tradition early in her career as Poetry Editor here a the Mule. In past years, we have featured such esteemed poets as: Kathryn Stripling Byer, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Marjory Wentworth, Claudia Emerson, Sue Brannon Walker, and Cathy Smith Bowers.
This year we are fortunate to have two unique and wonderful poems from Joseph Bathanti, the Poet Laureate of North Carolina 2012-2014. He was appointed by Gov. Bev Purdue.
This April poetic tradition is a joy to create each year and we hope everyone enjoys reading all the incredible writing.
Later in the middle of the month -- don't forget -- Fiction! Essays! And now, read on -- on down the page -- there are 27 more poets here.
Janet Joyner : Six Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Number One: if you’re the one asking “Honey, who are your people?” let’s just say mine have been here long enough to understand the question; Number Two: there’s a reason my middle name is Lee; Number Three: I grew up in the Carolina low country where even the sweat sweats. That good enough?
**
Jim “Jazzbo” Chandler: Five Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I heared tell of some moron passin' around the word that Jazzbo Chandler might not be pure bred Southern...ignernt sumbitch claimed he was born north of the Tennessee--Kentucky line and jest claimed to be a man of the True South.
Boy, 'at got my damn blood boilin'! I was hotter than Granny was when she caught Grandpa out in the barn commiseratin' with some of the livestock in a manner that was again the law, I reckon. Grandpa claimed both snaps on his Dee-Cee bibs failed at the same time and he was astandin' on the five-gallon bucket 'cause he didn't wanna get cow manure all over his new clod stompers.
I don't reckon Granny believe 'at too much, 'cause she went up aside his head with a single-tree and brained him. He got outta the hospital a couple days ago after about six month, but I reckon they's somethin' still wrong with him . . . he said he's some German scientist named Brownsher Bosch and he owned the Ford Company. Hell, Grandpa ain't got a bucket to piss in nor a winder to throw it out of, not since his boy, Uncle Claude, went to sleep with his crack pipe and burnt down the house.
As the poetry editor of this here profane and vulgar magerzine tole me, us Rank Stranger stick together. Hell yeah we do; I'm buyin' me one of them damn plastic squeeze bottle syrup thangs, hell with them Karo bottles! They always mess up on me and I look like a sight with them pieces of biscuit stuff all over my overalls.
I'm a good Southern boy, though. I always let them pore kids what ain't got no food lick off the stickins. They shore like me.
**
Ronald Moran: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I love the South. Although I was not born in the South, I have lived my last 53 years in Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. My late and beloved wife, Jane, of 50 years is, along with her parents, buried in South Carolina; my parents are buried in North Carolina; and my children, born in Louisiana, live in the South, as do all of my grandchildren. Near the end
of my teaching career at Clemson University, one of my classes presented me with a framed certificate with the following inscription:
This Certificate
Allows as How
Ronald W. Moran
By Virtue of his Literary
Achievement
Is Now and Evermore Shall Be
A
Son of the South
That means a lot to me.
**
Wendy Taylor Carlisle: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was raised in Florida in the days when I could ride my horse across New River Bridge and tie her to a parking meter while I shopped in the 5 & 10. (yes. a nickle and a dime) Arkansas took hold of me in 1973; hasn't let go yet. I was an accidental Texan for a while. In the land of Budweiser and boviculture, I kept trying to get back to the mountains. When I went to school in Vermont, one of my buddies and I ordered a sack of grits shipped in so the cooks could make grits for everybody--not everybody ate them. Right now, I live in the Arkansas Ozarks and damned glad of it.
**
Joe Mills: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Although I wasn’t born in the South, I have lived here long enough to acknowledge strangers I pass rather than walking by silent and stone-faced. I hadn’t realized that I was doing this until a trip up North a few years ago when I received several startled reactions from people whose expressions said, “I don’t know you. Why are you talking to me?”
**
Poetry
Essays
