C.E. O’Banion :: Fire Ants
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born and raised in East Texas, I’ve lived in the bogs of southern culture my entire life. From a town with a Baptist church so big it transmits sermons to New Orleans, to college in Baton Rouge,...
Anthony Picardi :: infection ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement I moved to a small farm on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 2004. Last year, we finalized a conservation easement on our entire 64-acre farm so it would be perpetually preserved. The community of woods, pond, fields and...
Richard Weaver: “In the Year of the Mullet”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born on the same day that George Armstrong Custer died, though “Autie”, as he called his adopted self, and I never exchanged letters. But that don’t make me a soldier or a Southerner. The first...
May Jordan: “Walking Through”
Walking Through A Sunday lit with sunlightmade the mountainof snow we accumulated, shine as if a glacier at dawn.I was up-stairs getting dressedfor church when suddenly,my husband called for meto come down in a hurry . . .a giant, chestnut...
Barbara Conrad: “This Bed”
This Bed I’m counting the years I’ve slept in this Charleston four-poster rice bed,and yes, the men who’ve slept here with me. More than five, fewer than a dozen, only two still rooted in regret. Even when nights are long...
Paul Jones: “Hell”
About my Southernness: I am still Southern. The other day, I visited the Old St Paul’s Cemetery near Newton, NC. The place is chock full of Setzers, my grandmother’s people. The first one in the ground there came from Heidelberg...
David Kirby: “I’m Not the Person She Thinks You Are”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first twenty-one years of my life in Baton Rouge. Like everyone else, I knew all about Billy Cannon, the LSU halfback who won the Heisman Trophy and was later arrested for counterfeiting and sent...
Dead Mule Submissions and more…
Hey ya’ll. I sent an email to those of you out there with submissions sitting in the Submittable hopper for the last eight months or more. Basically, if you submitted this year and I didn’t respond, please message me through...
What’s Your Label? Valerie MacEwan
I choose my label. “Writer” It’s rectangular. And temporary. I remove the large blue HELLO, I AM ____________ paper tag from my sweater and stick it to the mirror. Twenty years ago, my father put another label above my left breast. This...
Alexandra Melnick: Blade Running in the South
(Reprint from 2017 October Issue of the Dead Mule, seems very relevant today) In 1990, at a public lecture series on art in Los Angeles, three out of five leading urban planners agreed that they hoped someday L.A. would look...
“Our Nativity – 1970” by Dawn Wilson
(From the 2013 December issue of the Dead Mule. Truly a classic.) We had to borrow a baby. That was the least of our troubles. There were half a dozen teen mothers in the parish who were more than glad...
Benjamin Scott: Travis, the First
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Dallas to a father from Hopkins County, Texas and a mother from Ashley County, Arkansas. I come from a long and proud line of dairy farmers, oil drillers, coal miners, and truck drivers....
Ed Brickell: The Horned Toads Confront Their Young Human Captors
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Batesville, Arkansas and was duly moved to Palestine, Texas at the age of three so my dad could try his hand at coaching Texas high school football. He was pretty good at it...
David Earl Williams: When She Dressed Up Nice
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up at Greenup County in Kentucky right near Plum Fork Holler. My grandfather was a graduate of Leavenworth in Kansas where he received his federal degree in Moonshine. Jesse Stuart came to my high school,...
Lenny Lianne: When Rains Were Frog Chokers
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent the first five-eighth of my life, the formative years, in Virginia and come from Southerners with a love of language and landscape, good storytellers. My ideal meal would be a tall glass of iced...
Poetry
Essays
