Poetry

Robert Thompson: Potty Mouth Philosophers

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There is a warmness to the South. Beyond the obvious, the steamy summers and Goddawful humidity, its native peoples don’t hesitate to pass the offering plate for Ms Jenny’s nephew who came down with a dreadful ailment...
Fiction

Van Wurm: Pachinko in the Afterlife

Southern Legitimacy Statement: For my prior publications in The Mule, I have written of my semi-fictional relatives from the part of the world where I first saw the light of day — West Alabama. This time the setting of my story...
Fiction

Claire Fullerton: A Place in the World

Southern Legitimacy Statement: a proud Southerner from Memphis, Tennessee. For nine years,  I worked in Memphis radio, beginning with a Memphis Music show on WSMS and ending on WEGR, on the infamous Beale Street. A Place in the World I used...
Fiction

Rob Bockman: Costume Party

Southern Legitimacy Statement: A resident of South Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rob Bockman writes fiction drawing from his experiences traveling across the Southeast, mostly through the lens of folklore and myth. The...
Fiction

LaVonne Roberts: Coming Home

As a girl whose more Texan out of Texas than in, I’m known as Gotham City Cowgirl in parts out East and as the girl with the Texas is larger than France t-shirt in France Mostly, I’m known for takin’...
Fiction

Ronnie Sirmans: 4ever

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Georgia and that’s where I’ve returned. I’ve worked at Southern newspapers. And I enjoy tomato sandwiches each summer using tomatoes grown at home.
Fiction

Joe Halstead: Hoppy

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: It’s kind of wild where I grew up. I had my own gun at six years old. Ran down rabbits with my dad and helped beat their heads against the bumper of the truck, because they weren’t...
Essays

Michelle Brooks: All Women Are Bunnies

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As for my southern legitimacy statement, here it goes. I grew up in Mineral Wells, Texas where my mother sold rattlesnakes that had been frozen and subsequently fashioned into paperweights. Nothing could put a smile on her face...
Blog

Memoirs on the Dead Mule

The Dead Mule speaks in many voices. Mule Essays lead the mind into myriad swamps of distant memories or new ideas covered in eloquent jargon and folksy rough and rowdy ways. We’ve decided to feature Memoirs as a stand-alone section...
Poetry

Justin Evans Poetry

SLS: Though I was not born or raised in the South, I have lived in Georgia, Texas, and in North Carolina, while I was in the U.S. Army. I may not know much, but I know enough to never refer...
Fiction

Sidney Kidd: The Day I Grew Up

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I reckon my statement should include things I take for granted even as I attempt to ignore all the stereotypical attributes. I grew up in a three room shotgun shack that leaned to the left upon rotted...