Southern Legitimacy Statement: I still say y’all, ain’t and I reckon. I live near Tampa and I would say that is nearly southern as one can get, although I don’t live near a swamp. Calls From the Southern Forest Today, in the forest, I happened upon something that triggered a…
My Southern Legitimacy is that I used to work towboats out of exotic ports such as Fouchon and Houma. There I developed a lifelong thirst for sweet tea and gumbo done right. If that isn’t enough legitimacy, I understand. Not everyone can be genuine Southern. Three Poems THE ACE HOTEL…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up on a tobacco farm in Rougemont, North Carolina. As soon as I turned eighteen I did what everybody else who gets tired of the work and the dirt and the tobacco worms do and I packed up my things and walked away. I spent…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up watching the BC Powder commercials with the woman clutching her temple and saying: “That sure ain’t helping my headache.” I learned at an early age that one of the proper ways to drink Coca-Cola is from a bottle with salted peanuts dropped in. Blondie…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m tired of apologizing for being a native Floridian. I’ve never ridden an alligator or cooked meth, and “Florida Man” headlines freak me out too. Some of us down here in the thumb of the country are nice, normal people, but I can’t deny that living in…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The folks below were born in Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Unless there is a statute of limitations on the Southern Legitimacy Statement I sent you in 2016 when you kindly published my “Mule Toe” poem, I am opting out of this requirement. I have lived at…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the segregated South. Separate water fountains, restrooms, seating in the movie theater, and schools. My high school didn’t desegregate until two years after I graduated. I regret that. My city commission just moved the statue of a Confederate soldier from downtown…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born by coal oil lamplight in a tin-roofed farmhouse 6 miles outside Liberty, Mississippi. I list logging, plowing with a mule, picking cotton and working in a country store in my resumé. Learned to swim in an Amite River swimming hole–no lessons. My uncle went to…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Knoxville, TN. and lived in Tennessee and Virginia while growing up. However, we moved North to Chicago a few years later. Dirt Clods Dirt clods were rock and clay projectiles molded together and thrown at each other by the kids in my new…
Acknowledgments This chapbook is dedicated to self. The first 33 poems were written in the Old Capital of China, Xi’an, in 2016 and the last few poems were composed at the immigration hospital in the city of Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.A. in April 2017. During my harshest time in Xi’an,…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: An image of a worn Meerschaum clinched tightly between my father’s tobacco-stained teeth as he loosed an iron horseshoe toward a wooden stob in the ground. Granny’s Rapture “Bobby, you better git in here fore the Rapture comes and leaves you behind.” I had just pitched a…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia and live in Savannah, Georgia. I went to school in South Carolina and Alabama. When I joined the Army they stationed me at Fort Benning, Georgia. The south won’t let me go. The Bunker Forward Operating Base Rusty was a…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family migrated from the red clay hills of Northeastern Mississippi to the mountains of North Carolina, up around Asheville, when I was three. Buncombe County. Origin of the word “buncombe,” later “bunkum,” later “bunk.” Meaning nonsense, blather, twaddle. We couldn’t afford ice cream, but when the…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: It’s true I was born and raised in Chicago, but after my parents died, I found evidence that I was conceived in Tucson, Arizona. I ended up living in Tucson quite by accident nearly twenty years ago. Years before, I lived in Houston, Texas where my home…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: This piece will resonate the most with New Orleanians/ southeastern Louisianans, but I hope the bigger picture will resonate with all, regardless of geography. Nectar Cream It was August when I first learned that your favorite Hansen’s snoball flavor is also Nectar Cream. Even for the hundreds…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: It’s true I was born and raised in Chicago, but after my parents died, I found evidence that I was conceived in Tucson, Arizona. I ended up living in Tucson quite by accident nearly twenty years ago. Years before, I lived in Houston, Texas where my home was…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Southern California and have recently spent time traveling through Arizona and New Mexico. These short essays come out of two recent trips. Five Micro-Essays Natural Concern I’ve never loved the red alders of Willapa Bay, but I would give them a chance. I would…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My name is John Dailey. I was born and raised along the Virginia / West Virginia border and lived on both sides. The Marine Corps took me away for a number of years, but I now reside on the North Carolina coast and am looking for a…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Fort Worth but hope to die in the desert. I love my two dogs, two daughters, and Texas, but not necessarily in that order. Mark A. Nobles is a sixth generation Texan born on Fort Worth’s infamous Jacksboro Highway and proudly claims blood and…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Easley, South Carolina, and now reside in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The closest I came to living in the northeast was when I lived in Maryland, and I lived there only a few months. All In a Day’s Work Candy Bar I entered the…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My poetry focuses on my small hometown in Central Florida, celebrating the natural, beautiful, strangeness of the people and place that shaped me; the portion of the state that often goes unnoticed. Crystal and Walt I. Crystal Says She’s Not in Denial I’m never going to tell…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was engaged in Mississippi; did not work out. I was married in Jacksonville, Florida; did not work out, except for a great son. I was married in Wrightsville Beach; we are coming up on our 26th anniversary. The Keeper He had played goalie or keeper in…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen to you read the phone book.” Three Poems Idlewild The…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Lucinda Trew lives and writes in Charlotte, N.C. She studied journalism and English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill… Women Who Lunch I was once hit by an automobile, announced the white-haired lady lunching with friends. At a crosswalk where there should have been…