Anthology Review: Erotique

by Lyn Jensen
From 1981 to 1996 Yellow Silk:  A Journal of the Erotic Arts served as an anthology for sexually explicit material--of high literary and artistic quality, with redeeming social value, of course. It provided a much-needed outlet where feminist writers could present eroticism that countered male-dominated expressions of power and subjugation.
Today the closest the publishing world may have to Yellow Silk is Erotique: The Wapshott Journal of Erotica.  You may buy current and back issues at wapshottpress.com where Ginger Mayerson has edited seven collections--and counting--since 2009.
Mayerson presents many flavors of sexual activity throughout these publications, and one of the best early collections is found in Issue 3 (Winter 2013). Your mind--and your passions--will be bent by five stories that demonstrate the breadth and depth of possibilities when writers travel into adult territory:

• "Sky Clad" by Sharanya Manivannan--in an exotic setting there's a brutal coupling and break-up that you may not get even after reading it repeatedly.
• "The Priestess and the Sorcerer" by David W. Landrum--a Viking priestess takes metaphysical revenge on evil Christians who raped her, and Game of Thrones fans will probably be pleased.
• "Escape on the Paracosm Express" by Carolyn Foulkes--a paracosm is a prolonged fantasy world invented by sensitive intelligent people who have been traumatized, a condition that includes its own geography, time, and history. A woman lives in three such paracosms. In one she's a fifties' housewife seducing an innocent boy, in the next she's a Depression-era innocent abused by an older man, and finally she learns to appreciate her womanhood with a lesbian at a seventies' protest march.
• "Too Late" by Raven Ramsey--geeky Hobbit-loving friends become more, helping the girl achieve self-confidence, thanks to her two guy friends.
• "Bonfire" by Raven Ramsey--in the woods behind a bonfire, a young man shares a secret with his married crush, but their secret may not stay secret for long.

Issue 5 (Winter 2014) is also highly recommended, including five short stories by Raven Ramsey, Butch Lee Rivers, Paullette Gaudet, Colleen Leah, Anne Namyr, Roger Leatherwood, and Rory Ondine. It's a collection you can let your mother read, provided your mother keeps Lady Chatterley's Lover on the coffee table.

Starting with Issue 6 (Autumn 2015) Mayerson has formatted the journal to feature a single author--either a collection of short stories or one work of 20,000-50,000 words. Issue 6 is a collection of short stories by Landrum, who contributed "The Priestess and The Sorcerer" to Issue 3. Issue 7 (Spring 2016) presents several short stories by Robert Earle.