The Front Porch by Tracei Willis
I consider myself to be a Southerner with Northern tendencies, an illegitimate daughter of the South if you will. I was born in Ohio to parents who were born and bred in Alabama. They felt their southern roots wilting when I was five years old, so they uprooted their flower child from sidewalks, snow, and front stoops, and transplanted me in red clay of Alabama, the Magnolia trees of Mississippi, and right up on my Big Mama's front porch.
Whenever my Northern idiosyncrasies began to surface, my parents would send to one of my grandmothers for some Southern reconditioning. It was in the kitchens of Nellie Willis and Annie Jones that I learned some vital Southern lessons: 1. In the South there are canisters on kitchen counters that contain sugar, flour, corn meal and grits-- store brand sugar is acceptable, but anything other than Martha White Self-Rising flour, Sunflower corn meal, and Jim Dandy grits, and you'll have a sure-fire riot on your hands. 2. There are as many ways to cook grits as there are women who cook grits, just smile and rave about not ever having had a finer bowl of grits and you'll be okay. 3. Every kitchen counter has two blue cans of Crisco, one that actually has Crisco in it, and the other to hold bacon drippings. (Don't ask questions, just eat.) 4. Sweet tea comes two ways down here, cold and sweet. You can make it on the stove top, you can make on the back porch, you can add lemon, mint, peaches or berries-- just don't make it from a jar of instant powder mix, and don't make it with sugar substitute-- if you ask for unsweetened tea down here, you're libel to end up with a cold glass of ice water. 5. The best seasoning for greens, peas, beans, squash, and corn? Meat. Preferably smoked meat. Preferably the neck, hock, or tail of a turkey, hog, or ox. Running short on meat? (That's what that can of bacon drippings is for.)
I am a Southerner, by way of Ohio, transplanted in Mississippi, with kudzu-like attachments to Alabama.
Running the Dogs by James Dunlap
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Born and raised in Arkansas with a hog pen in the front yard and pond in the back--grits on the stove. In these parts the Civil War is only referred to as The War of Northern Aggression. I grew up about three miles from Clifton Clowers and if you don' t know who that is, I'll have to ask you about your southern legitimacy. I could also tell you about the fishing, the trees and much cattle.
Poems Submitted Without a Southern Legitimacy Statement
The Dead Mule is getting too many poems submitted without a Southern Legitimacy Statement. Now we are southern and polite, so we usually return these and point out the error. But we are getting more submissions these days, so please...
Robert West: Six Short Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
The son of a North Carolinian and a South Carolinian, I grew up near the border--in southwest North Carolina, just outside Hendersonville. My childhood neighborhood was bounded by a cornfield, railroad tracks, a cow pasture, U.S. 64., and (on two sides) what we all called "the creek." Except for a college semester in London, I've never lived outside the South. I'm confounded by people who tell me, "You don't have a Southern accent." Maybe I don't talk like a Clampett, but if I'm not Southern, I don't know who is.
Mark Vogel:Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Though I grew up in southern Missouri, twenty miles from Kentucky and Tennessee, I have lived in Boone, North Carolina for the past two decades. Currently I live back in a holler, two miles from Snake Mountain, just off Meat Camp Road, Daniel Boone’s old stomping ground. Two years ago I raised a pet pig, but today I only live with my wife, two horses, three dogs, five cats, and three chickens.
Laura Minor: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My dead Aunt Sheri Lynn (R.I.P.) drank so much sweet tea, when the doctor took her off it, she hid tea bags in the couch cushions. I cracked pecans with great aunts Sissie, Tricie, Virgie, Jewel (married to Rule), Bobbie, Nanny, ... I forgot the rest of their names. I used to live across the street from 'Skynyrd's summer home on the river. I've dated a Molly Hatchet Roadie. Uncle Eddie (also R.I.P.) had the 'Hatchet gold record on his wall centered perfectly between two buck heads that he picked up in a pawn shop after a twenty year + dispute with the band over pulling the plug on one of their early shows ("Loulou, I'm the only man to ever pull the plug on Hatchet!") If none of this works, I have a rope swing scar.
Sandra Ervin Adams: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Although I lost my real house years ago and now live in a mobile home, I consider it my right to be a dreamer. I am proud to be southern, and if I had my way, I would own a renovated, two-story house that once weathered hurricanes, as well as The War Between the States. My books would be properly arranged on shelves in my library. The porch would extend all the way around the house, and sometimes I would sit there in the swing and watch the sunset. My cats would traipse up and down the wooden staircase. My whole family and I would gather around a tall Christmas tree, and we would enjoy big dinners like my grandmothers made.
H. Edgar Hix: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Am I not the descendant of a woman who packed up her children and fled Atlanta as Sherman approached? Am I not the heir of a Texas traveling salesman? Didn’t my grandparents survive the Galveston flood? Wasn’t my father a Fundamentalist minister in Oklahoma, the buckle of the Bible Belt? Didn’t I catch crawdads in the drainage ditch, wear a gray felt hat and play the Rebel? Haven’t I had a tornado come close enough to my mobile home to move the porch and didn’t I just miss that tornado because I had to run back into the house to get my favorite ball cap?
I have lived in Minnesota these 15 years, but ask me if I am not Southern. Ask my Northern wife if I am not Southern. Ask my black cowboy hat.
John Davis Jr.: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
In college, my Rhode Island roommate had regular nightmares that I was running Robert E. Lee’s battle saber through the top bunk, and consequently, him, from beneath. Seriously. The dreams may have had something to do with my insistence he keep my six-foot-by-ten-foot stars-and-bars tacked above his side of the room. Yeah, I was THAT guy.
Other than that, I guess I’ll have to rely on genealogy: I’m a sixth-generation Florida Cracker. My great-grandfather made the whips that Florida’s cowboys were nicknamed for. My family members, great-granddaddy’s descendants, have resided in the same pine farmhouse smack dab in the middle of Hardee County since 1901. That ought to about do it.
Denise Dix Leonard: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
It was quite a while before I realized you could say “yankee” without the appropriate adjective. If you could have only 2 books, they should be the Holy Bible (KJV) and Gone with the Wind. You NEVER measure when you sweeten a pitcher of sweet tea. The most beautiful accent I ever heard was that of my paternal grandfather Milton’s first cousin’s wife, Avis (also called Clifford) who was from an exotic country pronounced Jawjah. Daddy’s mantra: “The South Will Rise Again.” Nannie, my paternal grandmother, God rest her sweet soul, always sent me back to college with 2 fried chicken breasts, 2 rolls, and 2 pieces of homemade pound cake wrapped in tin foil in a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box. When I lived in Atlanta, I discovered Lewis Grizzard, one of the greats of southern literature. When I wrote a story in a writing class at UVa about “Grit Trees” some damn yankee thought it was serious…
Will Garland: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I used to stand in the woods and peer through ripped hole in a kudzu-covered fence to watch high school football games.
Meghan Brewer: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I'm from the depths of 'bama, a friendly bay community called Daphne you've probably passed through to get to more exciting things. We say our yes sir's and yes ma'am's as part of our manners and high school football, well... football in general is a considered a form of religion. When I escaped the confines of high school, I chased after the flow of music notes throughout the US, but always found myself truckin' back to this place, to this home-- to Momma, who by the grace of God, always takes me in.
M. M. Jarrell: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Over twenty-five years ago the folks in Mobile, Alabama welcomed my mid-western ways and dialect. I decided to stay. The suffocating summer heat, piles of fire ants and house-flooding hurricanes have not chased me away. Nor is it the azaleas, the pecan pies, and the setting sun that seems to sizzle into Mobile Bay that keep me here. Rather, it’s those relatives and loving friends. Then, there are those “golden-rule” strangers who rush to help when tough times hit. Like the chameleons that inhabit this area, I have learned to change. The southern experience is my reward.
Lori Blake: “To a Morning Glory”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in North Carolina. My first home was a 12’ X 48’ mobile home situated on a red clay patch that had once been a watermelon field. I lived a free range childhood, spending many a day avoiding summer heat by hiding deep in the woods, catching crayfish and minnows in the creek, observing termites on old logs, or trying to push my brothers into the creek beside of the big rock we were convinced housed a snake. We roamed in a pack, which probably explains the lack of wildlife sightings during my childhood years. Imagine ten children running barefoot down a trail their feet knew by heart, knowing just when to jump to clear the old hog fence now hidden by vines. We ruled the woods, and thought we ruled the world! It was not until many years had passed that I would realize how rare that kind of freedom really is.
It was not until I moved to Europe in the early 1990’s (my husband was Army) that I realized that 1) I did indeed have a Southern accent 2) Not everyone puts slaw on a hot dog and 3) a toboggan is a sled, not a hat! Well, who knew? My hiatus from the south was brief, and I am now back to stay. While I love to travel, I will always come home to where the dirt is orange, the tea is sweet, and dead mules are mourned.
Phillip Barron: “omnimpotence”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
A southerner — born and raised in the American South and lived in South America — Phillip Barron stays in northern California, where he works in the digital humanities. He previously taught philosophy at the Chapel Hill and Greensboro campuses of the University of North Carolina.
Poetry
Essays
