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	<title>Dead Mule School of Southern Literature</title>
	<link>http://www.deadmule.com</link>
	<description>Southern literature -- fiction, poetry, essays and photos since 1996</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:11:33 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Wow! Essays! Get your red hot essays!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Creative Non-Fiction in great quantities now available on the February Mule.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/blog/2012/02/wow-essays-get-your-red-hot-essays/</link>
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		<title>Terri French &#8211; When Pig Flies</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement: 
It's been almost a quarter of a century that I have lived in the south. I am an almost legitimate, 100-percent, bona fide, honest to goodness, dixie chick. Sure as a cat's got climbing gear, I am as country as a churn. These hills 'n hollers, this red clay, is my neck of the woods, my stompin' grounds, my. . .Ok, so I'm trying too hard. I've still got a few months left to get the Yankee out of me, ok? ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/terri-french-when-pig-flies/</link>
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		<title>Stephen March: My Dream of Magic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born about 100 miles South of the Mason Dixon line, and soon moved farther South, to Tennessee. I later lived in Louisiana, Georgia and, especially North Carolina. At a party in Soho a woman onced asked me, "If I woke you up in the middle of the night would you still talk that way (i.e. with that accent)? I told her that I would! ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/stephen-march-my-dream-of-magic/</link>
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		<title>Joshua Edds: Epiphany on the Waccamaw</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from everywhere and nowhere, a country boy lost in the city. The gods cursed me; my poor soul violently ripped from the warm embrace of my native West Virginia and hurled into exile. In my exile I've wandered aimlessly around the country, managing to settle down briefly in one strange place or another---the Kentucky coal fields, the drug-infested slums of the Carolina upstate, and now fondly call the bars and clubs of the Grand Strand nightlife "home." ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/joshua-edds-epiphany-on-the-waccamaw/</link>
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		<title>Carole Poppleton &#8211; Rituals of Beauty</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I grew up on grits, greens and biscuits with sawmill gravy. I never knew vegetables could be cooked without pork fat (strained and recycled from my mom's Maxwell House coffee can) until I went away to college. One of the highlights of my childhood was driving throught the streets of Birmingham, AL, and giggling at the crack of Vulcan's ass as an enormous statue of the iron god sits atop the main hill in 5-Points South. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/carole-poppleton-rituals-of-beauty/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Ray Abernathy &#8211; Valentine&#8217;s Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Marianne was a smart young woman, but careless. You know, the kind of careless that makes you forget the zip code when you’re addressing a letter, and then the letter comes back and because it contains a bank deposit, causes checks to bounce. You know, careless, the gift that keeps on taking. But on this [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/fiction/2012/02/ray-abernathy-valentines-day/</link>
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		<title>Ray Clifton &#8211; Zombies in the South</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the southern edge of the Blue Ridge in central Alabama, the product of a father from the cotton mill village and a mother who lived on the "respectable" side of the railroad tracks. A forester by trade, I roam the back roads of Alabama meeting people and looking for stories. Besides reading and writing, my interests include old country music, motorcycles, pork barbecue, and fine Boxer bulldogs. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/ray-clifton-zombies-in-the-south/</link>
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		<title>Alberto Alzamora &#8211; Conversations with Dad</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My Latino roots offer a unique perspective to my Southern legitimacy. I was raised so far in the South it’s not even the South to many, that’s how far south I lived, Miami to be exact. Eventually I moved up with you “northerner’s” to Raleigh, North Carolina, and was introduced to a pig pickin’ almost immediately. My friendly neighbors weren’t impressed about how we Colombians do the exact same thing, but they were awful polite! So here I am, a stranger in a strange land, 5 years now. I say hey, not good morning, and my wife is hot on the trail of the best hushpuppy recipe she can find. Legitimacy established! ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/alberto-alzamora-conversations-with-dad/</link>
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		<title>Ann Landsberger &#8211; Peacocking on Barbed Wire</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Long-suffering educator; freelance griper. Mother of five; drunk by seven. Rigorously embroiled in a twelve year battle over the pronunciation of the word "muscadine". ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/ann-landsberger-peacocking-on-barbed-wire/</link>
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		<title>Tish Rogers Mosely – Recollections</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Miss Tish was born and raised in Middle Tennessee where she still makes her home with her first husband J. and their sooner pup, Frances Montgomery. Where "take your shoes off and stay awhile" is not an invitation but a way of life. Where everyone has an Aunt Sis and Uncle Junior and no one outgrows their nickname. Where it's football on Friday, grapplin' on Saturday, and preachin' on Sunday. Where cuttin' your own switch is the price of forgettin' your manners and "because Mama said so," and "wait 'til your Daddy gets home," keeps you on the straight and narrow. Where "bless your heart" is better than cussin'. And, the two things you'd save in a fire are the family Bible and your 'naner puddin' bowl. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/fiction/2012/02/tish-rogers-mosely-recollections/</link>
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		<title>Sharon Stephenson &#8211; The Homing Mule</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement: Even though I was born in Kentucky (which is NOT Deep South), I was raised in Mississippi, schooled in Mississippi, college-educated in Mississippi and North Carolina. When I found permanent employment in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, my Maw asked if I was moving because I was tired of the Vicksburg battlefield and wanted something new. Let it be known that since I moved here in 1997, only one state has bothered to put a NEW monument on the Gettysburg battlefield. Guess which one? Of course. Mississippi.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/essays/2012/02/sharon-stephenson-the-homing-mule/</link>
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		<title>Foster Cameron Hunter – “Just the Tip” &#8211;  A Chapbook</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement:

As a proper southern gentleman, born and raised in Charlotte NC, I enjoy sweet iced tea, occasionally bourbon (mixed together with my sweet iced tea, umm, umm good), fried chicken, seersucker suits (preferably the classic blue stripe on white), muscadines (and the wine derived there from), sweet potato custard (at least that’s what my grandma called it), and of course, G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised In The South). ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/2012/02/foster-cameron-hunter-%e2%80%93-%e2%80%9cjust-the-tip%e2%80%9d-a-chapbook/</link>
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		<title>Robert S. King – Four Poems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Southern Legitimacy Statement:

 

Only the military draft could get me to leave the South where I was born and raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I grew up in chigger heaven, the red clay hills of Georgia, but somehow my neck never reddened. My accent could never choose sides either, owing to my heavy books and a thing called free verse.

I never wanted to put a hood over my head, much less burn Jesus’ cross, but my great great grandma shot a rapist union solider during the War Between the States (ain’t nobody calls it “The Civil War” around these parts). That’s still a story whispered with pride at family Sunday dinners (I mean “lunches” for you Northerners, and suppers are when you eat dinners—you damn backward yankees!).

In my growing years, I lived near a church and a still. In those woods I bet I could still find a still, and I bet too that I could find some of them still workers in church on Sunday puttin’ some ill-begotten gains in the collection plate.

The South has changed, but it still has a unique soul. For better or worse, I’m not just whistlin’ Dixie.

]]></description>
		<link>http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/2012/02/robert-s-king-%e2%80%93-four-poems/</link>
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