August is a huge month for the Mule!
We’re publishing 20 essays, memoirs, short stories, poetry collections … got it going on in August. Pay attention to our Southern Legitimacy Statements each month. They sure do make the Dead Mule sing. We’ve got some swell ones in August....
Jennifer Richardson : Cultural Debts : Essays/Memoirs : July 2019
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in southwest Florida where crocodiles living in the golf course lake routinely consumed small dogs whole. Cultural Debts I hadn’t thought of Jimmy Buffett for twenty years when, in the span of a...
Steven Levi: How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe : Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: This is a fake news story of how Nags Head, North Carolina lost its apostrophe. How Nags Head Lost its Apostrophe “Take it and be damned!” . . . Thomas J. Harkaway Perhaps the first and most...
Timothy Rodriguez: Deputy Carson Tinnin, summer of 1983 : Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I read that you folks originated in Pamlico. I used to work for the Sun Journal in New Bern. That was back in the days when daily newspapers were healthy. This story is one of a 100...
Leslie Kain : Grampa : Memoirs : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My earliest memories were of living in a small coal-mining “company house” near Shinnston West Virginia, and of using the two-holer out back. The aunt who raised me eventually moved the family to a small enclave of...
Amy Smith Linton: A Bedtime Story: Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My Grampa Navy was from Copper Hill, Tennessee, a place that still sounds like “Copper Heel, Tin ah see” when I type the words even though it’s been decades since he spoke about the acid and the...
Chris Espenshade: Green Bagel, No Snatch : Memoir : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As to Southern Legitimacy, in my day job as an archaeologist, I have dug holes and recovered history from throughout the Southeast. I have investigated the defining site types of the region, including whiskey stills, kilns where...
Joan Brooks Baker : …where you ever gonna belong, chile? : Memoir : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in New York with dyed-in-the wool Southern parents. They arrived in the city during The Depression determined “to make it,” as my father said, and they did. But they brought along with them the...
Barry Peters: Two Poems : Poetry : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: All you had to say was, “we don’t recommend you submit,” so I am submitting. Such is my legitimacy … Two Poems COOL JOHN FERGUSON He plays the requisite R&B, ballad, samba, smooth jazz, the pop tune...
K C Tora: The Unexpected Gift : Flash Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from the deep south of the Deep South, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I lived in the Glory Land for 30 years until I decided to spread my Southerness abroad, and now I live in Bangkok, Thailand, promoting...
Randall Ivey: Mr. Aldon : Flash Fiction : July 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: “Southern since ’63 with no plans to go anywhere else!” Mr. Aldon When my father died, Aldon Keane attended his wake in soiled jeans and a stained tee-shirt, his face a mask of tears. He hurtled into...
Danny Lee Ingram : Grammar Nudge #5 and #6
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Rome, GA, and raised in Trion, Pennville, and Summerville, GA. After many years as a road musician and earning three degrees–A.S., B.A., M.A., I taught English in three colleges, two of them in...
Megan Hoffman : Good Fences : fiction : June 2019
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having recently purchased an old farmhouse in rural Georgia allows for all kinds of inspiration. Some wonderful and some horrific. This story is one such instance. Good Fences Phone calls that come early in the morning are...
Poetry
Essays
