Recommended Reading From Online Magazines

We abhor disclaimers here at DSM. We look forward to them about as much as a kick in the nuts or, even worse, a taste of fried beer.  We’re well aware they’re necessary on PS3/Xbox manuals to safeguard against lawsuits by epileptics, for instance; or before Spike TV’s 1000 Ways to Die because, apparently, some of those who walk among us would actually contemplate copulation with a cow heart throbbing to 110v, knowing full well they are going to die.

Thus, the need for disclaimers. We don’t have one. That’s just how we roll, free and easy. But if we were pressed for one, this is all it would say:

WARNING:  You will not suck after reading our magazine.

You won’t. We promise. Have a great Labor Day weekend.

–Robert Paul Moreira

– It’s how he gets his rocks off, that’s how I look at it. He’d never say it so bluntly, but there it is. Henry, he’s a romantic. You give him hay and he spins it into gold; you show him an alley reeking of piss and horseshit from the last hansom cab stable in Chicago, with the el hammering the tracks so loud you can feel it in your teeth, and he makes it sound like some kind of special-effects Shangri-La. I’ve heard what he says. Showers of stars. Lights like an open-air disco. It’s fairyland, which I guess it is, if you want to be funny about it, but what does that make me? Some kind of chain-smoking Peter Pan? A big white rabbit stalking a sexed-up Alice? I’m the guy that tails him there night after night, and I stand on the corner and I wait for him to get what he needs and the whole time I’m praying this isn’t the night he gets busted by the cops or worked over by some bruiser or else jumped by kids so goddamn scared of their own need that they go and kick the shit out of some guy doing exactly what they want most. But this is what brothers do for brothers. — Brendan Mathews in The Manchester Review

– We had values. We had Le Creuset pots. We had fold-out couches in our living rooms, where we slept with our husbands at night. Beside these couches, we had books stacked on the floor: Modern Library editions of Kafka and James Joyce and Georges Sand. Beneath these high-minded selections, we had Lorna Doone and Anne of Green Gables, touchstones from a time when reading in bed was our guiltiest pleasure. — L.E. Miller in Ascent

– This man had a dog and his tail got run over by a car. Dog’s tail, not the man’s. Dog’s tail is bent and fucked up and it’s embarrassing. Man goes in, he gets a cleaver, he hacks the dog’s tail off right there on the curb. Neighbor kid throws up, tells his mom what happened. Mom beats the hell out of the kid for lying. Kid grows up to be President. Sometimes, that’s how this works. — Micah Dean Hicks in Tryst

– Thursday. Only twenty-four hours away. Who shall be next? Which direction will the lightning strike? If there was ever a time to be a nobody, this is the perfect epoch. Some wish they could simply change colour and blend into the dull shades of some of the dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of Mponela but alas their pigmentation is not as magical as the chameleons. Anyone who is conspicuous in any way could have the arrow of gossip pierce his neck. — Dango Mkandawire in StoryTime: Weekly New Fiction by African Writers