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.”
Suzan Phillips : 2010 Poetry
Suzan Phillips
Southern Legitimacy Statement
Ma-Ma would take Bo and me digging for sassafras roots in the woods next door. She would boil the roots and then we would drink the hot "tea" 'cause Aint Essie said it would keep ya reglar."She stopped a horse from bleedin', ya know? Tom Waters brought his horse over, pourin' blood outa his neck. Aint Essie went 'round the back of the house and when she come back, that horse 'ad stopped bleedin'.”
We dug potatoes, too. She had on her lipstick and floral print dress. As soon as we came out of the garden, she put her heels back on - black patent leather - and put the potatoes on to boil. "We havin' old timey pataters and lemon marengue pie." She watched wrestling while she ironed the sheets.
Then she took me over to Aint Correll's. We were going to get my wart taken off. I was five. We drove round a dirt driveway up to a little house and an old man came out. Flowers everywhere and trees and a bench swing hanging on a rusty old swing set. They talked a minute and then he gently asked me to go sit with him on the swing. He held a leaf in his hand, twirling it round between his finger and thumb. "Suzan, this hyere's a peach leaf. Come off 'at peach tree righttare." Silence. "D'you b'lieve I can take off that wort from your hand, thare?" "Yessir" "Well, hold out chur hand and lemme just rub this leaf hyere on yer wort, like this. See. Now, when you wake up tomorra, yur wort's gonna be gone. D'you b'lieve me, Suzan?" "Yessir."
My wort was gone the next day.
I think my southern legitimacy is evident!
Three Poems by Thomas Alan Holmes
Where I’m From (My Southern Legitimacy Statement)
after George Ella Lyons
I am from a back porch, from Coca-Cola and accidental parallel fingertip slits from my curiosity of discovering our first air conditioner’s condenser coil.
I am from the closetless, socketless, south-facing bedroom.
I am from the chinaberry and the redbud, from the mimosa, the looper caterpillars dangling in fine, translucent strands from its branches.
I am from first Sunday in May and first Sunday in June and close reading of scripture, from Byrum and Welton and Portis.
I am from working by the job and not the hour and from finding the next thing to do,
From “cry me a handful so I can feed the chickens” and “washed in the blood.”
I am from the belief that “born again” is a change of character and a political liability.
I'm from Cullman County and Morgan County, almond pound cake and corn meal dressing.
From Uncle William’s fishing too close to the locks when the TVA decided to release water from the hydroelectric dam, Aunt Kate’s refusing to try the home-canned pickles until only one jar was left and her crying about it, my parents’ eloping across the state line to Iuka, Mississippi, on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1956.
I am from the middle kitchen cabinet drawer, below the medications and above the dishtowels, in an envelope box of snapshots with edges worn as hammer handles, smooth as seasoned skillets, frayed as pockets.
“Bushrod” by Andy Madden
Southern Legitimacy Statment:
I am a true son of the South. I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. My mother once said to me that myself, Elvis, and US Highway 45 were the only three things that ever came out of Tupelo worth mentioning. I was raised in Corinth, Mississippi. I graduated from Corinth High School and ventured forth into the big world beyond Alcorn County in 1983.
I hunt and fish and purposely seek out mud holes to whip my pickup truck through, even though mud in California can some times be at a premium. I have a cousin named Larry Joe. I have been known to pick up fresh road kill on occasion. I believe barbequed Raccoon on a hot biscuit is one of life’s more special pleasures. I love my Mama and visit her twice a year no matter if I can afford to take the time away from my West Coast life or not.
I am Southern, first and foremost. Everything else is just, well…….extra.
Pyramid Schemes and Multi-Level Marketing
Testimony on “Oversight of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement” Read the entire testimony by clicking on the title. Andrew Ceresney, Director Division of Enforcement March 19, 2015
Robert Klein Engler — The Tourist
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have passed a lot of time living in New Orleans and traveling from there to Des Plaines, Illinois and back to NOLA. I take comfort in living by a river. I know what “lagniappe” means, and I plan on being buried above ground.
What is the south coming to?
Help the best of “The South” stay as is. Let the bitter past be studied — not re-lived — and let us not seek to destroy a unique culture.
Sara Whitestone “An Outsider’s View of Guns…”
Any woman who can bake a crawfish pie--and enjoy eating it--should be counted a Southerner no matter where she lives.
Becky Meadows “Three Seconds”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up on my grandmother and grandfather’s farm, where we ate fried potatoes, green beans (cooked for an entire day or more on the stove in a pot), and cornbread. Fried chicken was a treat we enjoyed, and it was really fried—not the carbon-copy fried chicken found frozen in stores today. We ate tomatoes from the garden (straight from the garden). My southern heritage isn’t limited to food, though—I have the most marvelous southern accent that I have refused to relinquish for academia. I’m proud of my heritage!
Poetry
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