Matthew Borczon: Three Poems
SLS- my grand father was a miner, then a railroad man before he left that life to live in Erie Pa and chase my grand mother. My wife grandmother lived in West Virginia where her father was shot dead on...
Herbert Woodward Martin: Poems
Mr. Martin needs no detailed Southern Legitimacy Statement, he has graced our website before today but I do want to include this: “I am a Southerner by birth and tradition. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1933. I send these pieces...
Katherine D. Perry: Poetry
SLS I was born, like everyone else, in a particular place. Alabama: not just a Southern state, but The Heart of Dixie, where vowels are long and round. I spent my early years in the woods (without a gun) searching for answers to how the...
Ron Cooper: Understanding Poetry
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South Carolina Low Country in a swamp so think that airplanes had to shift into low gear to fly over it. I retrieved the bones of Quentin Compson from the...
Greta Cabrel: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’d like to tell you about the poorly shrouded frost-burnt parrot carcass stashed in a friend’s grandmother’s freezer, but it’s not my story to share. I do tell on my housemates’ haints all the time, though, because...
Rebecca Baggett: Poem
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born at James Walker Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, NC to a Southern father and a ex-pat mother (Pennsylvania Dutch from Tulpehocken Township). Grew up at Carolina Beach, where except for Sundays we went barefoot or in...
James A. Autrey: The Lord’s Work
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and due to the divorce of my parents, went back and forth between there and Benton County, Mississippi which, at the time, was the 36th poorest county in the United States. Graduated...
Calvin Heyward: “I Captured the World in Mason Jars while drinking from Scooby Doo Jelly Jars …”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My southern roots are sown in the coastal island of St. John’s, just off of the beautiful peninsula known as Charleston, South Carolina. Though born in Harlem, New York – Charleston is the birthplace of both my...
Tom Sheehan: Letter To My Sweet-Smelling Woman Waiting
When asked to read to celebrate my new book of memoirs, I let the audience enter the cubicle from where the work came. I told them: I’ll celebrate with you by telling you what I know, how it is with...
Stephen Harris: Stronger than Breath
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Stephen Harris is from Cayce, SC and currently lives in Raleigh, NC. He eats a biscuit for breakfast every Friday because he used to eat a biscuit for breakfast everyday. He just ate a Cheerwine donut and...
CL Bledsoe: Feeding the Fish
Another in our Series of Memoirs by Mule editor CL Bledsoe. Read on, my mule readers … read on. Feeding the Fish My Dad woke up, and woke me, before the sun, which is something I’ve never forgiven him for....
Tom Sheehan: The Day I Grew Up
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have appeared in your publication, spent a recent vacation in NC, read in NC, worked in Tennessee for a short time. The Day I Grew Up I was fighting it all the way, wearing knickers, me, twelve...
Carroll Leggett: sis claire
Southern Legitimacy Statement: To start with, I can’t find your so-called “Southern Legitimacy Statement” on this website, so you can just kiss my old southern ass if you don’t think I am southern enough for you. My forbearer James Castellow was...
Nelson Lowhim: Journal of the Dead
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Writer and veteran. Born in Africa, currently live in Washington State. Oh, it doesn’t really end there, but that should be good for now. Since some people tend to ask: yes I served in the US Army. I...
Geoff Balme: Dizzy Looking Up
The sky was so high and so blue we got dizzy staring up at it. Contrails criss-crossed like giant, white, pick-up sticks. Stumbling out into the sun after so many hours of nothing but being fat-assed on the sofa, eyes...
Poetry
Essays
