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The Dead Mule School

Online since 1996. "No good Southern fiction, poetry, essays, cornbread, coon mule jumping competition, swamp dance or pig pickin' is complete without a dead mule..."

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

Steve Meador: Calls From The Southern Forest : Fiction : November 2019

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,...
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Poetry

Travis Stephens : Poetry : November 2019

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...
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Fiction

Diana Cejas : The Crunchy Kind : Flash Fiction : November 2019

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...
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Fiction

Christina Johanningmeier : Blondie : Fiction : November 2019

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...
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Fiction

Andrea Rinard : Bouquets : Fiction : November 2019

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...
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Poetry

Richard Weaver : Three Southern Last Word poems : Poetry : November 2019

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...
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Fiction

James Ryer: Girl On The Bridge : Fiction : November 2019

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...
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Poetry

Robert Funderburk : Three Poems : Poetry : October 2019

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...
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Essays

PB Johnson : Dirt Clods : Memoir : October 2019

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...
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Poetry

Chen Du : Pilgrimage – A Chapbook : Poetry : October 2019

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,...
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Fiction

Rodney Barfield : Granny’s Rapture : Fiction : October 2019

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...
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Essays

John Stevens : The Bunker : Memoir : October 2019

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...
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The Dead Mule

Check out the early years of Dead Mule wonder,  go to our sister site:  the Dead Mule Archives.

Southern Legitimacy Statements

You’ll find the statements at the forefront of everything. These statements are the heart and soul of the Dead Mule. Everyone is south of somewhere.

 

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Copyright © 2025 since 1996

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature 

ISSN 1535-8488.