American fiction moves onward and upward. It progresses forward in its tone, its sense of balance and its voracity. I have never enjoyed reading submissions more than I have for this issue. It is with a sense of pride and a feeling of true joy that we present this April Dead Mule to you all. [...]
Poetry for all issues through July is full. Unless your poems were in my inbox at midnight EST March 8, you can expect a long wait.
The Dead Mule has nominated two poets for Best New Poets 2010. Our nominations are Curtis Dunlap for “On Momma Exiting the Denim Factory” (July 2009) and Anderson O’Brien for “Under the Quilt (January 2010). To be eligible, a poet must NOT have a full length book published or accepted for publication before November 2010. [...]
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I asked my Chicago-born wife of eight years to explain why I am Southern. (The parentheticals are mine.)
“Daniel, there are so many things you could write about. You got married in a tuxedo that you bought at the Goodwill store the day before the ceremony. Tell them how you and Bill lassoed the seven-foot alligator and hauled it all over town showing neighbors and relatives before falling square on your butt when it lunged at y’all out of the trunk. Tell them how your brother and his wife raised goats and fowl in the yard of their plumbingless house, and when you asked what happened to them, gleaned that they’d eaten them in lean unemployment times. Tell them how many times you have threatened to leave your beautiful legitimate educated wonderful wife (her words verbatim) for Patty Loveless, just to hear her twang (actually, her dialect is extraordinary, rapturous). How you like your wife to call you “Danjo” in bed. Tell how you are always wanting your wife to grow out her armpits and leg hair because you think it is sexy. Tell how you’ve eaten opossum, rabbit, coon, rattlesnake and raw oysters right off the rock to your father’s delight (he was a gourmet of sorts). Oh, and tell them how you were arrested in the city park in nothing but your underwear retrieving a half-empty bottle of wine you’d been sulking with there with the night before. That was REALLY charming. Don’t fail to mention that when I bailed you out, I did NOT bring you anything to wear home. (Curiously, this parallels an anecdote about Faulkner we learned from locals in Oxford MS, where we honeymooned, bribing the groundskeeper to let us into Rowan Oak for a look around) Tell how in college you had this Jesus Period OF YEARS where you lived in a homeless shelter (worked, actually) and only wore gray T-shirts, worn jeans, sandals and ball-caps without variation. Say how you lived as a bachelor until 40, eating meals out of cans and so now when I make you a Banquet frozen pot pie you think I’ve prepared you a gourmet meal. How you can’t go to bed without eating 3 bowls of cereal heaped in tablespoons of sugar. That at Christmas you empty all our cracker boxes in the pantry to wrap presents….How you told the choir director of the church when we were dating (I was organist) that your hands were stained from refinishing furniture because you couldn’t wash the hair-dye off of them. Oh, Oh! And tell how in high school how you (and others) cemented your reputation as a nerd by lighting your farts in the motel on a student trip (I was actually more interested in the science of it, truth be told) I could come up with some more, Daniel . . .”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I still cook and enjoy okra some 45 years after leaving the South, where I started grade school in Baton Rouge. I have the good fortune of having a mother from New Orleans who taught me how to make gumbo and remoulade sauce and introduced me to Truman Capote and Eudora Welty (not literally).
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
When I eat at Cracker Barrel I order Chicken ‘n Slick – with a side of slick.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Growing up in Tippah County in north Mississippi, I feel that I was truly blessed. Where else could you buy blackberries from Toad Flake, actual name, as he toted them from house to house. I know it’s carried, but we always called it toting? The names were astounding. Avis Bass, an uncle who played the fiddle. His band, “Avis Bass and the Swingers.” And Emma my mother. Except her name was and is still pronounced Emmer. Cotton fields. When I was about eight years old or so, I thought it would be nice to hide in the cotton field for three hours. Emmer thought that I had been kidnapped by a trucker whizzing down Highway 72. I was beaten with a switch. Emmer knew just the tree. I never hid in the cotton field again. My best friend was Ronald Wilbanks. His father Floyd, always bought his Ford trucks in Memphis. He said that he got a better deal down there. We used to go to the storm house because my mother was scared of thunderstorms. It was a big hole dug in the side of a large red clay bank. My relatives would show up, and they would bring my Great Grandmother, Etta Bass, Avis’s mother. She told us the best scary stories which she called “Bear Tales.” Scare the Hell out of ya.
I love the south and my ashes will be scattered among my kinfolk at Camp Ground Methodist Church which is located in the woods near Chalybeate.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’m from Charlotte, NC, and I grew up in Bullock Creek, SC. Aside from the mere fact of growing up in a place named after a Creek, which should in and of itself serve to vouch for my legitimacy as a Southerner, I have the innate ability to know the difference between Merle Watson, Merle Travis and Merle Haggard as well as knowing how to clean a shotgun and a fish. My status as a southerner was cemented when Turner Broadcasting chose one of my spoken word performances for their commercial series on “My South,” thus introducing the true words and worth of the South to all those damn yankees watching the Braves games. My mama makes gravy from scratch and I had a brother-in-law named Bubba who had his name on the back of his belt and used to cook a pig in a pit for the 4th of July every year. I like my beer cold, my pickles fried and my barbeque wit mustard sauce, cause that’s how we do it my patch of woods.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My mother (Sarah Nell) and her nine, ten, or eleven sisters (Minnie Pearl said like Minna Pearl, Eartha May said like Ersuh May, Mary Helen said like May Hella, Rosalee, and etc.) grew up in River Falls, Alabama with their two brothers (Pete and Snow) and mother LueBertha. They had chickens and pigs and cows and they grew their own corn, and tomatoes, and okra, and peas. My father and his sister grew up in Thomasville, Alabama and they had a pecan tree in their backyard. Their uncle and aunt raised them. Uncle Alphonza and Aunt Dora were known as grandpa and grandma to my sisters and me. I was born and raised in Connecticut. It may have looked like Connecticut on the outside, but inside my parents’ house it smelled and sounded like Alabama. We ate grits and “hot sausages” (I don’t know what else to call them) and boiled peanuts and my mother says “Eem/Ev’m” for “even” just like in Eudora Welty books. She says, “I be dog,” and all that. She’s just so southern.