The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature – Page 4 – No good Southern writing is complete without a dead mule. Established 1996. New issues on the 15th of every month.

Jefferson Fortner :: A Honky-Tonk Epiphany | My Grandfather’s Garden | Wine, Women, and Song ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a lifelong resident of North Carolina, as were my parents, and my grandparents, and great-grandparents, reaching back to well before the American Revolution. It must be admitted, however, that there were a few immigrants from...

Creative Non-Fiction / Memoirs

Lee Anne Sontheimer Murphy :: Asleep in the Arms of Jesus ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My ancestors wore Confederate gray and stood with Lee at Appomattox. My husband’s folks hailed from Louisiana and I learned to make gumbo and chicken maque choux and boudin from a Cajun lady named Miss Odile. My...

Poetry

Biff Rushton :: Where 42 Crosses The Sabine | George Daniel ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In early 1835 my fourth great grandfather, John Nolan and his brother James, fled the Tithe War in Ireland and arrived upon the fringes of revolution in Texas. A little over a year later, Texas had become...

Flash Fiction

Randall Ivey :: Call Me Aa-ron ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Despite being from a place called Union (South Carolina), I am a born, bred, and dyed-in-the wool Southerner. Call Me Aa-ron If you run into me somewhere and say hey, don’t call me Air-ron. That ain’t my...

Flash Fiction

Scott McLeod :: Cody ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from the South shore of Long Island which is positively Faulknerian if you compare it to Gatsby’s East Egg. Cody “You ever seen a dead body?” asked Cody. I was just glad he was speaking...

Fiction

Fox Good :: He Keeps the Faith ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Raised in Maryland, 10 miles from the Mason Dixon. Summered and Wintered (and more often than not Sprung and Fell) in West Virginia, where nouns are verbs and verbs are for the doin’. Drinking Costa Rican coffee,...

Poetry

Jessica Sampley :: The Cowcumber Poem | South Florida: the lover driving alone sees Indian River fruit | At the Mill Creek Dam, Carbon Hill, Alabama—the Night Jay Almost Died ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I open my mouth and the South comes out. I grew up listening to my mawmaw’s stories and trying to come to terms with the beauty, complexities, and dualities of growing up in rural Alabama, and I...

Flash Fiction

Karen Klein :: Remnants ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: This story arrived while I was sitting in the cemetery in Morgantown, West Virginia at the end of S High Street. It was a place I frequented often on sunny days, or cool days, too if it...

Creative Non-Fiction / Memoirs Essays

James Huneycutt :: Drug Policy Memo ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The author is an ex-offender who runs a successful plumbing company in Virginia. He scribbles on the backs of invoices, estimates and parts lists. These scraps accumulate on the dashboard of his plumbing van until he can...

Fiction

John Jacobson :: 1979 ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in the western Catskill Mountains, at the northern edge of Appalachia, south of the Adirondacks, most of New England and of course Canada. We’re south of a lot here. Anyway, I try to write about...

Flash Fiction

Jordan Thornton :: Youth Grouping ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up falling asleep to the sound of a box fan in the window. I’ll stop at any fruit stand that’s selling boiled peanuts. There aren’t many bodies of water that I won’t swim in. My...

Poetry

William Heath :: Preacher Knox | Jail, No Bail | Tales from Liberty ::

Southern Literature: For five years I taught American literature and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, the favorite school of the antebellum aristocracy in the South; I am the author of an award-winning novel about the civil rights...

Poetry

Richard Collins :: Cement Buddha and The Past Is Not Past ::

Southern Legitimacy Statement My first two wives (it didn’t work out; it didn’t work out) were from Southern California, where I grew up, but the third (the charm) is from Louisiana. Her Cajun father – who spoke no English until...

Jefferson Fortner :: A Honky-Tonk Epiphany | My Grandfather’s Garden | Wine, Women, and Song ::

Lee Anne Sontheimer Murphy :: Asleep in the Arms of Jesus ::

Biff Rushton :: Where 42 Crosses The Sabine | George Daniel ::

Randall Ivey :: Call Me Aa-ron ::

Scott McLeod :: Cody ::

Fox Good :: He Keeps the Faith ::

Jessica Sampley :: The Cowcumber Poem | South Florida: the lover driving alone sees Indian River fruit | At the Mill Creek Dam, Carbon Hill, Alabama—the Night Jay Almost Died ::

Karen Klein :: Remnants ::

James Huneycutt :: Drug Policy Memo ::

John Jacobson :: 1979 ::

Jordan Thornton :: Youth Grouping ::

William Heath :: Preacher Knox | Jail, No Bail | Tales from Liberty ::

Richard Collins :: Cement Buddha and The Past Is Not Past ::

Categories

Pages

Archives

Poetry

Essays

The Dead Mule

Southern Legitimacy Statements