Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I spent a lot of years trying to get away from the south; now I can’t imagine living anywhere else. So many of the images and references that I carry with me seem or feel southern, though I’m still hard-pressed to say what it is that renders a thing or experience uniquely southern. I know that I feel a deep and oftentimes painful affinity with the south. I miss the southern accent when I go away. I love our seemingly southern garden—all the honeysuckle, magnolias, crepe myrtle. Tomatoes, mint, rosemary, thyme. I’ll always vividly remember what it was like being drunk in the Pacolet, buying moonshine down on Scrivens. Working in the peach orchards. I love the red Carolina soil (though it is a bit spongy). The fireflies and long, sweltering summers. Ghosts everywhere. I’m open to visiting almost any place on the planet, but I want to live in the south—and I want to die here too.

Okay folks. Fans of Ann Hite. Lovers of fine prose.
Samplers of the short story form, tipplers of torrents of fictionary delight…
Click here to download the .pdf version of
Life on Black Mountain
by Ann Hite
A collection of short stories featured in our own
*applause* *applause*
Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I grew up in a Tennessee town with the only movie theater–one screen–for 45 miles. When I was ten I got a calf, Nancy Drew, and we came in third at the county fair. She wasn’t as fun as Bocefus, our deer that’d eat cat food from your hand and butt a beach ball with his nose. I’m a teacher in Louisiana now, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl; the students love that I call them “y’awll” and make “fight” sound like “faht,” and I still whip up Mammaw’s turkey dressing. Here’s a hint: it’s not from a box.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Well, some ten generations of us dirt farming Yelton’s have trod the good soil of Virginia and North Carolina. I am a Rutherford Countian by birth and live there now after periodic exiles to Charlotte, Greensboro and Atlanta (which used to be a Southern city). I study the Civil War and live it in my waking dreams. I admire Lee and Jackson, Longstreet and Hill. My great-grandfather shed blood at Amelia Courthouse when Lee’s miserables were forced to skedaddle west and south by the Yankee hordes. I have written a novel, which I self-published, Scarecrow in Gray, based on my great-grandfather’s Civil War experiences.

I travel on foot, in my thoughts, and sometimes in my dreams to the high mountains of the Old North State as often as possible. Their pull on me is strong. I like to write about them and their mysteries. They are as old and inscrutable as the moon.

I love Southern writing, though I find Faulkner a bit dense and claustrophobic. I prefer Pat Conroy, Howard Bahr, and James Lee Burke.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I’m a Kentucky Colonel, a lay preacher (Unitarian Universalist), and I cook grits in heavy cream. I’m also a first-generation Taiwanese native of Texas who married a Caucasian Canadian; we occasionally feel compelled to point out the white guy’s the immigrant.

The Dead Mule is proud to announce our nominations for Best of the Net. Congratulations to these fine poets and writers.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am trying to live in all of the southern states. So far I have lived in Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina, where I currently reside with my bulldog, Grits.  (That is really his name.  And he is of the UGA bulldog line.)   I suppose he is like in a mule in all respects but one…his ability to produce offspring.  Otherwise, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t do much but lay around, and he has a nasty attitude to boot.  I guess if that is mule criteria, I could be considered one as well. 

Southern Legitimacy Statement

I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina with family friends for about three months in the summer of 2003. My memories of the Charlotte airport and the warm climate, in addition to friends whose company made me feel at home then, remain my treasured recollections of the south.

Southern Legitimacy Statement

When I went off to college, the guy at the registration desk asked me if I was a Texas resident. I told him I was and he asked how long I’d lived there. “All my life,” I said.

He nudged the woman sitting next to him at the big folding table they had set up there in the gym and said, “How long have your parents been here?”

“All their lives,” I said.

He gave his woman friend a sidelong glance and asked about my grandparents. I told him they’d lived in Texas all their lives, too.

He gave me the in-state tuition rate, so I guess I’m Southern, if Texas counts as a Southern state.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Grits, Sweet Tea, Magnolias? Not so much. We had Captain Crunch, Diet Coke, and kilometric flora. I was born on Saint Simons Island, Georgia, which is the home to the world’s largest outdoor cocktail party, and educated at the University of
Georgia. Now I live in San Francisco, where being a Georgian is pretty much exotic.

Southern Legacy:

My Daddy’s nickname is Pooch or Poochie. All his sisters say that when he was just a little boy, the local yard dog bit him…but to the dog’s surprise, my Dad bit him back. Speaking of my Dad, he has a faint blue scar across the bridge of his nose, something about an ax and coal dust. In the secretary upstairs are pictures of my Mother in her coffin and a tape cassette of the funeral. Who does that anymore? Is this southern or just some morbid way of remembering the dead? I always tell people, if I’m stranded on a deserted island all I want to eat is hot cornbread with cold milk (and maybe a bowl to eat them together) and red velvet cake. Hmm, that’s really a toss-up between the Red Velvet or the Mississippi Mud cake my Granny (who always said she was gonna get shed of things) made for each of my birthdays. And last, but certainly not least, sausage gravy and biscuits. I once read an article about cooking with kudzu and thought it was a really good idea. Oh yeah, and speaking of southern legitimacy, my Daddy once said, “what’s wrong with having a red neck?” If that doesn’t take the cake, then I don’t know what does.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

My father is a minister from North Carolina. He claims we’re
descendants of Gen. Nathanial Greene but has no proof. I have always
put my corn-on -the-cob directly onto the stick of butter, take my
grits with cheese, and know that Duke does not count as a Southern
university. I take pleasure in correcting people as to the right way
to pronounce ‘Appalachia.’ Dean Smith resides in the same category as Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and Dale Earnhardt. I am a graduate of Elon University and a student in the MFA program at Hollins University.

**

Poetry Editor’s Note:

The Dead Mule is proud to present a very special poem, “Real South,” as the final poem by Luke Johnson. I’d never before received a poem (in a submission) that truly made me cry. This one did. Luke assures me that “the poem fought it’s way through many drafts (and many trips back to the museum).”

We now publish “Real South” with great honor, thank Luke for allowing us to present it to our fine Mule readers, and hope Luke sends other poems our way.

We are hoping to publish some Holiday/Winter/Christmas Poems in December. Please send submissions to deadmule.poetry@gmail.com by November 15.
The regular submission guidelines still apply, especially the requirement for a Southern Legitimacy Statement. The only exception is that we will publish poets in back to back issues for this special issue. No previously […]