Wayne Scheer: Summertime Ain’t No Time To Sing About
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Wayne Scheer, a Yankee by birth and a lover of thin crust pizza, has lived in the South long enough to crumble bacon into his grits and to think of Moon Pie as a food group.
Charity Cupcakes by Valerie MacEwan
My Southern Legitimacy Statement seems kinda’ obvious being as I am the publisher of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. That said, I revel in the South. Love my neighbors as myself and sit on the porch with them. I...
Allison Thorpe: Five Poems
SLS – I’ve swallowed moonshine and lived to brag about it; escaped a copperhead’s randy tongue; ridden a tobacco setter like some rogue elephant; eaten fresh-caught bluegill at dawn; been romanced by a choir of whippoorwills; and fallen asleep amid...
A Chocolate Tale by Virginia Lee
Southern Legitimacy Statement — Named by a daddy who aspired to Southern gentility, Virginia Lee lived up to her name and earned a degree in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Piedmont of North...
Convalescence by Alan Steele
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm from a small town just outside Cowtown (Fort Worth to those who don't know better), with white gravel roads that claimed my front teeth one time and the skin off my knees and hands a few more times. I'm from a place that meant running around with no shirt or shoes from May to September, trips to Mott's 5 and 10, and visits to grandma down around Houston to work the fields, each her famous drop cookies, and help her cook pie or cobbler or wild grape jelly. Dad was a cop and mom stayed home, and I'm still close by, though the town has changed and the light in town has a few new friends and a new toll road for competition. The fire department closest is still volunteer and football will always be king on Friday night.
Rite of Passage by Michelle Ivy Davis
Southern Legitimacy Statement: As someone who has almost always lived in the South (Southern Maryland, Southern India, Southern Florida and Southern California) I have these wonderful memories:
Our yard filled with lightening bugs, their twinkle lighting up the night. My sister and I caught them in jar, had my mother poke holes in the lid, and took them to our room to watch until we fell asleep. The next morning the magic was gone and they were just bugs. We let them go, only to repeat the process again that night.
I remember the twang and then bang of the screen door as we went in and out of the house a hundred times on summer days.
I always wrote thank you notes and still do. There’s something satisfying about a pretty little card and words of gratitude.
I remember when standing in front of a fan really did cool you off, even though the air coming from it was as hot as that the room. It was the humidity evaporating off my skin, y’all. And we opened the windows in the morning, only to close them and pull the curtains later to hold the “cooler” air in and keep the hot afternoon sun out.
Pulling off a honeysuckle blossom and sucking out the honey was heaven.
And the calming beauty of Spanish moss swaying in live oak trees? Only in the South.
Mule Day by Alex Miller
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Alex Miller is convinced that everywhere is south of somewhere.
Falling Down Jack by Tom Sheehan
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My work has appeared before in DMSL and I have vacationed and read in NC, and worked in Bristol, Tennessee.
Dale Ain’t Dead and Elvis Ain’t Either by G. C. Smith
Here by special request, back from The Dead, April 2005: Southern Legitimacy Statement: I'm for sure Southern cause I chill out on Budweiser while propped up in front of the boob tube watching NASCAR racing. I wrote a novel about murder in the world of Nextel Cup racing. The title is WHITE LIGHTNING. If that don't make me Southern, nothing will...
New Fiction and Essays for August 2016
We’ve got some damn fine fiction here for August. Sit back and read for a spell. You know, been thinking about sitting a spell — a spell — so many meanings and we take words for granted. Like the idea...
Dilly Lee by Gaylynne Robinson
Maybe it’s a Texas thing, but whether I’m listening to guitar pickers under the big oak tree at Lukenbach on a Saturday afternoon, or cruising the aisles looking for bargains at Fredericksburg Market Days or watching fish jump in Oso Bay down in Corus Christi, or swimming at the dam in Hunt, Texas belongs to me, and I belong to it.
This is my kind of south. Now I once had a friend from Tennessee who disputed the “south-ness” of Texas. I will attest to its southwesterness, being just a couple of miles down the road from George Strait’s horse barn, but it’s south all right.
But Texas is “southern” in its love for land and its history.
In my south, you can trust a cowboy.
You can serve your company beans and jalapeño cornbread on your best China.
Saturday night’s for wearing your broken in boots to listen to Willie and dance at Floore’s Country Store.
In my south, people aren’t too busy to talk about nothing. You get the friendly finger wave driving down any country road and you can call up the corner grocery and ask if they have any fresh tamales.
In my south, we sit outside on the porch at Halloween and watch out for our neighbors’ kids.
In my south Texas sky, you can still see the ripe orange moon sitting pretty in a nest of stars.
We might laugh at ourselves during a watermelon seed spitting contest or a sandbelt tool race, but we love our flag and our earth and our “southern” way of life.
Gaylynne Robinson
Trash by Markus Jones
Fixing cattle fences after tree falls and winter winds makes a mess of everything just so I get chance at Joe’s fried mountain oysters isn’t the only reason to live in the southern Appalachians, but it’s a damn good one.
Markus Egeler Jones is professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Rose by Shari Barnett
It is a quiet portrait of a Southern marriage during the influenza epidemic in the early 20th century. It is nearly the exact opposite of another story I had published in Brevity about meeting Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas in 1983 while dressed as a life size Pac Man.
Breadth, right?
Bill Prince: The Boy, The Buck Rabbit and the Beagles
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am an eighth generation direct descendant of a 1740 immigrant who came to America as an indentured servant to the Trustees of the colony of Georgia. I was born in Valdosta, GA and have lived in either Georgia or South Carolina all my life. Reared and educated in South Carolina, I have been residing back in my native Georgia for over 50 years now. I am legitimately southern in my origin and life and lifestyle.
Jennifer Green “Keeping a Dead Mule Down”
Southern Legacy Statement – Half Mexican, Half Redneck. I use that to describe my heritage.
Upon hearing that: my mother's family gets upset and offended, my father's side laughs and hollers. I'll let you decide which is half is which half.
From ages three to eighteen, one year of my life was spent in Southern California, the next in North Georgia. The odd-numbered years were in smoggy cities, people giving me odd looks for ordering sugar in my tea, and mocking me when I say “ya'll.”
I was fired from my first California job because customers insisted I insulted them by saying “sir” and “ma'am.” When I got older: I chose fresh air in the woods, people that became your new best friend when you share the counter at Waffle House, and smiles when I reply to statements with “sho'nuff.” Now, I'm the boss and all my employees know full well to treat all customers with respect and address them with “sir” and “ma'am.”
Poetry
Essays
