The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Natasha Wall: Two Poems

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I love being Southern bred and born. I love the simplicities of life and the nuances that we hold. I love how we like sweet tea and Kool-Aid--affectionately known as "diabetes in a glass." **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Deborah R. Majors: Two Poems

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Even though I've lived overseas and up North, living in the Florida Panhandle since 1969 and having a father from a small town in southern Georgia makes me, I believe, a true Southerner. As a child, I've smelled the dried tobacco leaves of Georgia tobacco farms, climbed the same oak tree my dad fell out of as a boy and broke his arm, sat on a creaky wood porch swing and listened to the adults until shooed off to bed, ate peaches--fuzz and skin if I didn't have a knife, walked to the store for a grape Nehi which we plucked from a chest refrigerator, slept in Great-grandma's tin roofed house with a fan and no AC, swam in many-a-creek, eaten mullet and shark, went crabbing and floundering, and sugared my feet with the white sands of the Emerald Coast, which was called the Panhandle's Playground in 1969. As an adult, I've walked up on a gator, shot what I thought was a rattler, had an escaped ostrich run beside my van on a country road, and had a neighbor's cow look at me through my living room window. Mimosa, honeysuckle, yaupon, tall pines, turkey oaks, live oaks, magnolias, dogwoods, wild azaleas, blueberries, scuppernongs, broom sage, and a slew of other southern flora dot our 30 acres. I often sit on my porch at night, listening to the kudzu grow, sipping sweet tea, reading Paula Deen's cookbook, and swatting skeeters. **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

C.P. Varnum: Two Poems

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Tucker, Georgia, a sleepy little town with a main street bisected by train tracks. I grew up barefoot and tree climbing every chance I got; until the long piercing whistle of my grandfather would call us in to wash up before supper. My teenage summers were spent: sneaking cigarettes at church camp, listening to Lee Greenwood over the loudspeakers at the Laser show and sharing Coke and cherry ices from the Milk Jug on Hwy 29. After a gracious yet failed attempt (phew) as a debutante—I hitched a ride north to the Appalachians, where I quickly acclimated a love of moonshine and mandolins. I currently reside in Charlotte, NC with my partner and four-year-old daughter. In our yard there’s a broke down 1974 VW super beetle, enough weeds in my flower beds to make my mother cringe, and a fire pit covered with a plastic baby pool so it won’t get wet. It’s not red-neck, its resourceful southern planning. My white chicken chili is the bees-knees. **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

G. C. Compton: Hillbilly Heaven

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was jerked up by the hair of the head between Doc Bill Holler and Buzzard’s Roost, Kentucky. My daddy was a coal miner but could read writin’ and knew all the words to “Sally Goodin.” I’m a member in good standing of the Game Fowl Breeders Association and drive my wife to church in a four-wheeler. I don’t eat grits but like soup beans, taters and dry land fish--for breakfast. I’ve got a Rebel flag in the back widow of my pickup and a sign on the front bumper that says: Honk IF You Love Jesus! I don’t speak nary a word of plain English and always thought the diphthong was what the purty girls wore at Myrtle Beach. **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Evelyn Seay: On the Dock in September

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in Yorktown, Virginia I recently relocated to study Poetry at George Mason University. There, I have learned that I miss drinking real sweet tea on my humid back porch, watching my 4th of July Fireworks on the Yorktown Battlefield and seeing people dressed in colonial-era garb on a regular basis. My fondest memories stretch across the south, from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and Tennessee's Appalachia to Lake Gaston and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, then farther still to the swamps of Florida. Editor's Note: The Dead Mule is always pleased when we learn that we are the publisher for a poet's first published poem. Congratulations, Evelyn. **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Poetry

Mary Laura Philpott: Sisterhood

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved around a lot growing up. Born in Nashville, now in Atlanta, I’ve left pieces of my youth in Chapel Hill, Hagerstown, Memphis, Augusta, Davidson, and Charlotte. I married a boy from the Kentucky bluegrass, and our babies wear seersucker and say yes ma’am. I learned to snap beans from my grandmother in Birmingham and perfected the art of deveining shrimp with a Palmetto Pale Ale cradled in my elbow during summers in South Carolina. When asked where I’m from, I just say “the South.” **
Read More
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Fiction

Bob Thomas: Duel In the Sun

Another piece of very short fiction from yesteryear, the 1998? 1999? archives. From the notes: "Bob Thomas is the owner of Kristi's Gallery in Swansboro, N.C. After 13 years as an Executive Recruiter he decided to pursue a less stressful lifestyle and moved to the North Carolina Coast. His Gallery looks out over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and is an outlet for the work of over 215 Artists and Craftspeople from across the United States. Since his move to the coast he has discovered a love for writing and publishes his own in house monthly newsletter. His readers have realized that his style is not "hindered" by the rules of good grammar and that he writes mainly for his own entertainment!
Read More