The Rag

by Seth Porter (Editor)

The Rag's a biannual electronic magazine, features short stories, poetry and art. This is the issue that launched The Rag, and right from the start you'll see this is a different kind of literary magazine. The Rag seeks the true grit of the literary world. The writers here never pull their punches, and the results are unfiltered and sometimes raunchy--but this is contemporary literature--always fresh, always relevant.

The selections in the Fall 2011 issue have a criminal bent, with a touch of noir, but moreover they chronicle the death of the American Dream. With no hope for a better future, the characters are fighting with society and themselves, and it's these battles that make these stories compelling.

Contents:

"Best Intentions of Goody Abshire" by Wes Trexler
"The Real Deal" by Curtis James McConnell
"Babar" by Anne Opotowsky
"The Ill Tales of Mr. Gordonson" by Carlos Velazquez
"Triple Threat" by Timothy Ghorkin
"The One-Legged River Ho" by Sascha Matuszak
"On the Line" by Mike DiMarco
"Disappearances" by Isaac Savage
"Dirty" by Patrick Million

121 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 3, 2011

Reviews

[David Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first issue of The Rag presents a formidable and convincing selection of short stories mostly refllecting situations between Virginia and New York--but not without exception. Each author presents in turn a grotesquely poignant evolution of characters, ranging from drug dealers, drug busters, drug prescribers, gamblers, and whores. The first volume reaches its apex of quality in the opening of "The One-Legged River Ho" by Sascha Matuszak: "The Funan River embraces the city like a mother still struggling with addiction. Sluggish and turbid then thin and translucent, ending in nodes of plastic, shit and rubble scattered through the crumbling zone between city and farm. Summer is here and the Funan is a swollen, retching thing releasing gas into the air and ebbing in and out of slime-choked canals."

The sum of the first issues strikes the reader like an adolescent-becoming-adult masterpiece: while yet in its prime and showcasing pieces that are often alluring by nature of shock value, it promises no lack of talent nor reservations that it will quickly become one of the finest literary magazines produced. The stories often feel like cynical and sarcastic, disilluisioned youth. Mike Dimarco epitomizes this perfectly in "On the Line": "I was coming out of school looking up at the world with big eyes ready to be somebody and now here I was, just a speck of life in the salty wet dream of the masses wipin sweat off my brow and grease off my knuckles so some yuppie investor could have his flank steak the way he liked it."