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.
Danny Says–a vignette by AS Coomer
I'm a native Kentuckian currently riding out a purgatorial existence in the arctic Midwestern abyss. I catch glimpses of the bluegrass sometimes, when the sun is exceptionally blinding and making a rare appearance. I can still feel the cool Nolin River on my feet when I slip out of my snow-soaked boots. When I sink the shovel into the mounds of winter-refuse I can still--sometimes--imagine I'm actually just raking the burning leaves of my parents' backyard trees.
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?
What Happened to My Brother by Daniel Leach
Dan Leach’s short fiction has been published in various literary journals and magazines, including The Greensboro Review, Deep South Magazine, and The New Madrid Review. A native of South Carolina, he graduated from Clemson University in 2008, and taught high-school in Charleston until 2014 when he relocated to Nebraska. Floods and Fires, his debut short-story collection, will be published by University of North Georgia Press in 2016
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.
Mule writer Kevin Winter publishes book of Short Stories
Check out Kevin Winter's new short story collection "A Place We All Know: A Collection of Short Stories"
James K. Williamson: The Night I Saw Dwayne
We ask questions in Darlington County, S.C. and those questions are to make sure we're not related, me and you. Porch nights in Oxford but only a few minutes over Barry Hannah's grave. It's hotter than hell and far. Mortician and poodle meet ups in Birmingham. Delirius drives from Little Rock to Asheville, you name it. I'm looking for a sawdust floor in New York City and someone to buy me a drink. I have carpal tunnel so you might have to lift the glass. Hey, I'm just glad to be here.