Lori Blake: “To a Morning Glory”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in North Carolina. My first home was a 12’ X 48’ mobile home situated on a red clay patch that had once been a watermelon field. I lived a free range childhood, spending many a day avoiding summer heat by hiding deep in the woods, catching crayfish and minnows in the creek, observing termites on old logs, or trying to push my brothers into the creek beside of the big rock we were convinced housed a snake. We roamed in a pack, which probably explains the lack of wildlife sightings during my childhood years. Imagine ten children running barefoot down a trail their feet knew by heart, knowing just when to jump to clear the old hog fence now hidden by vines. We ruled the woods, and thought we ruled the world! It was not until many years had passed that I would realize how rare that kind of freedom really is.
It was not until I moved to Europe in the early 1990’s (my husband was Army) that I realized that 1) I did indeed have a Southern accent 2) Not everyone puts slaw on a hot dog and 3) a toboggan is a sled, not a hat! Well, who knew? My hiatus from the south was brief, and I am now back to stay. While I love to travel, I will always come home to where the dirt is orange, the tea is sweet, and dead mules are mourned.
Phillip Barron: “omnimpotence”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
A southerner — born and raised in the American South and lived in South America — Phillip Barron stays in northern California, where he works in the digital humanities. He previously taught philosophy at the Chapel Hill and Greensboro campuses of the University of North Carolina.
Michael Evan Parker: “Old Woman Sweeping”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Raised and fed by a Southern lady from Chattanooga, who taught me good eating and good manners.
When I die and go to heaven, I'm praying the heavenly banquet will include:
Fried Livermush
Pintos (with pork in them)
Green beans (with pork in them)
Collards (with pork in them)
Corn bread (with pork cracklins in it)
If there is no livermush or pigs in heaven, then--if I have my 'druthers--I reckon I'll have to stay right here in North Carolina.
Kathleen Kirk: “The Last Word”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Oklahoma and then lived in Florida from infancy to age 6 and went to kindergarten during the Cuban missile crisis and ate sugar cubes with polio vaccine in them. My favorite foods as a child were watermelon and hushpuppies. (Why aren’t hushpuppies on your list?) I also sucked on sugar cane and ate boiled peanuts. Childhood is all about food, right?
Theresa Corbin: “The Climb Down”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a map of all colonies passed in Louisiana. Not the Louisiana we know today, but the big boot that once stomped it’s splendor over one third of our great country. My features mix Spanish settlers and French revolutionaries with a generous pinch of aboriginal Americans and an African essence that make all these traits given to me decidedly creole. But more than that, I have an inexplicable lust for all things spicy. I can’t make my feet still at the sound of a drum carrying a rhythm. My grandfather’s blacksmithing art was commissioned in the building of the bird cages at the Audubon Zoo. I am deeply offended by improper nomenclature of my favorite native dish, it’s not crayfish! Those native neighbors of New Orleans who dug up the mudbugs’ mud piles in their backyards as kids and suck the flavors from their deliciously stewed skulls call them crawfish. My first trip north of the line of Mason Dixon was not until I was sixteen. I must have brought the heat with me because it was the worst heat wave that Michigan had ever seen when I arrived that July. Welcome to my world, I thought. I have lived through hurricane after hurricane (and I’m not talking about the libation sold on Bourbon St), and humid hot summer (of swimming and sipping tea) after humid hot summer (of slip and slides and hiding in the shade of a tree). And for all this I carry the badge of Southerner.
Dempsey D. Miles: “Idle”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Honeysuckles, Chopped Pork BBQ and Muscadine Wine
I remember walking from my grand mama’s house with my brother. We’d walkthrough the lane that was in truth a two way, one way street. I mean the signs said one way but cars went both ways and nobody seemed to mind because everybody in Starkville, Mississippi knew that the one way was a two way. The lane contained the most magical delights almost year round. There were pecan trees, peach trees, pear trees, and a long row of sugary sweet honeysuckle vines; and that was just on one side of the road. We never seemed to mind it was all on somebody else’s property. I am sure they didn’t mind sharing with all the kids who walked that lane.
My Uncle Johnny barbequed pork almost year round, no matter the season, in every type of weather. He cooked whole hogs for other folk’s barbeques and party’s. He owned a little farm, with a cinder block smoke pit in the rear. He would slow cook the hogs for long hours then once the meat cooled he would chop it up, adding grand mamma’s secret vinegar and tomato based spicy sauce. The kids made sure to hang around near enough to be unofficial, official tasters. As much as we tasted it was a wonder there was enough hog left to serve at the party. That chopped barbeque served on white bread with homemade potato salad and collard greens was always a show stopper. Add a little sweet tea, or an ice cold Budweiser, and you were in it to win it!
My other Uncle, on my Momma side liked to brew his own “shine”. That’s moonshine to everyone above the Mason-Dixon Line. He was a bit of a local legend in his day known for his jovial nature and quality of his shine. He even measured a man’s worth in increments of shine. For example, if he said a man wasn’t “worth a fifty cent shot” then you knew that person to be of low character. And who are better judges of character than shine drinking Baptist in Mississippi? My favorite was his muscadine flavored wine. He’d pay his nieces and nephews to collect ripe muscadines by the brown paper bag full; two dollars a bag, good money back in the day. He’d throw the bags in the back of his old Chevy truck and disappear off to his secret place to brew his wine. We children would always be allowed a good nip during funerals, weddings, holidays, are whenever somebody left a jug unattended and in our reach. It was always sweet going down with just the right amount of burn in the throat.
Now you tell me; ain’t I southern enough?
Cathy Smith Bowers: The Poet Laureate of North Carolina: Six Poems
Poetry Editor’s Note:
Each April the Dead Mule publishes a Poet Laureate of a Southern State at the top its list of fine poets. This year’s honor goes to Cathy Smith Bowers, Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Born in South Carolina and Southern to the core, Cathy is the sixth in the Dead Mule’s April Poet Laureate Series.
So help me welcome Cathy to our Big Ole Southern Family.
Prairie Markussen: “The Women of Scottsboro”: A Chapbook
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I once had a migraine in Savannah. I saw the cherry blossoms blooming in Macon. I ate shrimp and grits in Charleston. I survived a family vacation and a freak storm in Ft. Lauderdale. I did not "Eat at Joe's" in Nashville, but I saw the sign. I drank wine and fell in love with a bearded man I'll never see again in Makanda, Illinois, and while that might not be the official south, it seemed pretty darn close.
Jenny Billings Beaver: “With or Without”: A Chapbook
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Hey Ya’ll. My name is Jenny Billings Beaver (used to be Jenny Elizabeth Billings – SO OLD FASHIONED) and I have lived in North Carolina my entire life. I grew up on a dairy farm – in fact, I lived so far in the country that we didn’t get cable, pizza deliveries or any-kind-of-traffic until 2002. I didn’t have a bike, I rode around our 30 acres on a golf cart – that was long after we moved out of our marigold yellow mobile home with white shutters and grassy green carpet that sat under a weeping willow (it died when Hurricane Hugo came through in 1989). I drank only sweet tea the first 18 years of my life, still call my grandfather “Poppa”, love me some grits and sausage (with a lil’ mustard, of course!) and for god sake – married a man with the last name “Beaver” on Halloween. Bless my heart!
Carter Monroe: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’ve lived in NC all my life. When I travel North, I often find I’m the only person in the room without an accent. I believe in seeking forgiveness for my sins, but I can’t make myself ashamed of committing adultery. I understand why Southerners never move North to retire. I refuse to eat anything I can’t pronounce. If it weren’t for vampires, I’d have no use for garlic. I know what a “potteridge” is and know that to correctly pronounce it you have to slur at least one syllable. I believe in being polite to your face. If you have to ask for chili on a hot dog, somebody ain’t from around here. I deal with my high blood pressure by getting no exercise. I only drink cheap domestic beer and I never drink just one. I’m only grammatically correct when I choose to be.
Pris Campbell: Six Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was raised on cornbread, fried chicken and okra in a small town in South Carolina. My great grandfather fought in the Civil War. I have a photo of him with his mule. That mule is now dead.
Tim Peeler: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I come from cotton farmers on the one side and subsistence farmers on the other. I grew up in a parsonage that was located on a hill above a road that forked three ways; each fork led to a separate washboard red dirt road. During the summer they poured oil on the roads. The smell of those roads is embedded in my memory.
Marty Silverthorne: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Everybody’s dead and visiting the graveyard just don’t feel the guilt like a good plate of almost black collards, a streak of fat, a streak of lean, two cathead biscuits to sop up grandma’s molasses. It’s about being here in the barren field with a winter wind kicks up the dust and spirits run length wise down the empty roads. I don’t know if northerners are haunted by the dead or not, I’ve never been one. I’ve been here all my life, one thirty mile loop and you can visit every grave that’s inked in the back of this ole Bible passed down to my daddy and he stole it and passed it to me and I don’t know much about southern except that’s all I have ever known.
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