Life on Black Mountain
A short story collection by Ann Hite

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda was appointed Poet Laureate, 2006-2008, for the Commonwealth of Virginia by Governor Timothy M. Kaine. She is the author of several books and anthologies. Her poems have appeared throughout the United States and abroad in numerous publications. Her many poetry honors include three Pushcart Prize nominations. She has been named a Virginia Cultural Laureate for her contributions to American Literature. And yet, when the Mule asked her for poems, she replied by saying, “How kind of you to write to request a poetry submission.” The last three poems are from Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda’s newly released book, River Country.

Please welcome our newest Poet Laureate Mule Poet, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda.

The halls are buzzing—here at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. So much excitement about Poetry. So much excitement about Ann Hite. So much anticipation. Even rumors, once in a while, concerning the upcoming Southern-style Garden Party honoring Ruth at which time Poetry Editor, Helen Losse, will meet Fiction Editor, Phoebe Kate Foster face [...]

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I said to my friend Tim, “I don’t know how poets in other parts of the country have anything to write about. We seem to have such a monopoly on the bizarre, the pathetic, and the passionately contradictory.” I said this after telling him about my mother’s seventh husband’s father who lived in the same four-room house with his wife and his ex-wife. They were sisters. They lived in the same community where everyone I knew under the age of 18 was taught to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am” and switched or backhanded if they didn’t. It is the South’s brutal civility, stubborn independence, intolerant faith, and other everyday idiosyncrasies that constitute the seemingly inexhaustible source of the Southern writer.

“The Last Stopping Off Place is the final story in Nellie’s life and is told from quirky Bea Weehunt’s—the readers will remember her from Mr. Snake Gets Religion—point of view. When I wrote this story I thought it was over. I thought, okay that’s the end of Black Mountain. Now I move on somehow.”
–Ann Hite

An original short story collection “Life on Black Mountain” to be featured here in May! Read a bit about the author, Ann Hite.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Will it help if I say that I was so homesick for South Carolina two weeks ago that I got into Google Earth and called up a tiny corner of Williamsburg County, my mother’s birthplace, and then moved to the small town of Sumter, where I was born, to find the exact neighborhood where I once played with my brothers in the dirt with our coal bucket in the backyard? It’s possible that living where I have lived for twenty years, southern Appalachia, could make me a southerner, but that’s not the case. My roots are in South Carolina, and when spring comes I’m like a dog catching a scent in the air. I want to get in the car and drive down the mountain to the low country where I was born and bred, where generations of my family were born and bred. Two years ago I brought my mother, Mama, up near me to live, and you’d think that having her with her equally southern accent and charm ten miles down the road in a cozy nursing home that I visit almost too much would make me feel as if I’d brought the most important part of South Carolina, my father already buried down there, up to me. I’ll tell you the truth. When the two of us get together and sit on the porch (since I picked her nursing home because it has a porch and flowers she can tend and horses across the street that we can watch and all the loving care you’d get in a big extended family living in a big house the way her family did a few generations ago), it’s almost like being back on her porch. But it’s not quite the same.
Would I lose points if I said I qualify for Colonial Dames but am not at all likely ever to join? Having moved away from the South Carolina where my family had lived for generations without straying far, having married a man from New Jersey, having borne a son who doesn’t talk like he comes from South Carolina—these things should not be held against me.

I currently live in Meadowview, a rural town in Virginia near the border of Tennessee, and work in Emory, an even more rural town in the interior of Meadowview (Emory is a village within a town, a very small village within a very small town).

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I live in the Deep South—southwest Louisiana. I am a Cajun woman who loves her culture, its traditions, music and food. I am the Gumbo Queen. I make a mean crawfish étouffée. I can gut and skin a catfish, play bourrée (A Cajun card game) and sing hundred-year old songs in French. I love our coastal wetlands, mossy oaks, Cypress swamps, prairies, muddy bayous and all manner of flora and fauna which thrive in our natural areas, especially those organisms which can be baked, stewed, roasted, fried or fricasseed.

Kevin Blankenship served as a Poetry Co-Editor of the Dead Mule.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I drink tea that’s sweet and eat cornbread that ain’t. I somehow feel responsible and guilty all the time, I’m polite to all, I put my enemies back on their horses and I let them tilt at me again! I raised chickens and rabbits in the dirt in my backyard before and after school. My daddy took me hunting on Sundays. While I stood frozen and dumb, amazed at the birds and the four-leggers who sprung from their hiding spots, my daddy would shake his head at me, and with an expert shot, drop them. His shot was so expert he had time to chastise me with a look – before he took down the quarry. Hell even the dogs would look disappointed in me. I rarely rode my horse, and instead just enjoyed feeding him ’til he looked like a barrel with legs. But when I did ride him I tried to joust – I jousted against posts, and bottles set on rocks – and fell off… losing to branches and made the horses laugh and laugh. I fall in love too much. Girls have told me, I’m TOO SWEET. Every summer I forget about the chiggers and I get well over 300 bites on my ankles that make me lose about a week’s worth of sleep – and so I write these insane stories. I practiced getting rid of my “Y’all”, and “might could” – because I wanted to be a punk rocker, and I never knew that I could be a southern punk. I’m always miles behind.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Will it suffice to say that I wish I was from the South—I have ‘Southern Envy’ or whatever you’d like to call it. We all know the best writers come from the South. Who wouldn’t want to read Carson McCullers or Ellen Gilchrist? Who wouldn’t want to write like them? I almost went to LSU for my MFA, but then I couldn’t afford it. Oh, and there was that time I had a mullet in college, but that was really an accident.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I grew up in Joliet Illinois, which is just Southern enough to have kidnapped from the Southern repertoire. Joliet is just close enough, tough enough, and within close proximity enough to the South to qualify as Southern. If you travel a little further east into town and purport not to know what collard greens and grits are, you may get beaten up. If you don’t have just enough quarters to play Lynyrd Innard’s on the jukebox, or have perused the poetry of Joe Bolton—who hails from Cadiz, Kentucky—then one has yet to experience the finest art the South has to offer regardless where one was raised.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in a swamp. Really. I have seen alligators crossing the road. I have (illegally) eaten said alligators. When I was in middle school I had to write “‘Ain’t’ is not a word” 28,366 times thanks to one English teacher (supposedly a carpetbagger) whose mission it was to beat the southern out of us. So I grew up and studied linguistics in college. I now pray silently for the day when a teacher tries the same trick on one of my children, so I can throw my weight around in defense of our culture. We must not be punished for our dialect. Ya’ll.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

As most of yawl may or may not be, I am a self professed proud country boy from the Bar B Q soul food and Blues capital of the universe—Memphis. If there is anything I need in the world to survey outside of women (plural) and my family, its my Rifle, my pickup truck and house shoes, and a news paper or two won’t hurt none either. And please, don’t look at me funny when I am in a restaurant and pull out my hot sauce, because it is way different from Tabasco.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am Southern because I was born and have always lived in the South. I am not sure I could be objective enough to point out what qualities I might have that are Southern since I have never lived anywhere other than here, but I know that I do have some of those qualities. Well, at least the ones that someone from North Carolina would have.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Land surrounds my home, so beware of the dog.
I eat beans from the can and I love pot liquor.
My boots track mud, my pickup blows smoke, and I still pledge allegiance to the flag.
Sundays are devoted to God and NASCAR.
I’m southern and country.
The kindest asshole you’ll ever meet.

Postcards and spider webs

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born and raised in the Carolinas. My long distance family members live in Virginia, and have passed down the great love that I have for gravy and biscuits in the morning and beans, fried potatoes and cornbread at dinner.

For anyone near Raleigh — check out the Zany Umbrella Circus coming to the Raleigh Little Theater May 9-11.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I grew up mainly in Missouri, which would probably make me a Southern Yankee…

I recently moved to North Carolina, with my wife, who is a native Texan from a very Southern family. I came to learn how Southern her family was in an entertaining, and semi frightening, manner. One of her brothers jokingly called me a Yankee. Hearing this, my wife’s grandma became agitated, and demanded to know what a Yankee was doing in the house.

So I guess you could say I am Southern through migration, marriage, and initiation.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

My life in the South began with the ridiculous transition from a metropolis in the land of the rising sun to a small town in Georgia five minutes from the Alabama border. A child without any English speaking skills absorbing all the goodness of southern hospitality. I lived on Dixie Street in a historic house and had an accent recognizable by locals in Colorado during summer vacation trips. I forgot my native language and was forced to attend Saturday school sessions for Japanese students living in the United States. I have grown, as has my love for the South.