Issue Ten
In this decade special, the mammals prepare a lavish banquet of fungi and silken oysters. Welcome to the party. Let’s dress up in the fins of deep-sea fishes and find a fancy photobooth that snaps our pearly auras. Here enemies turn to lovers, kisses are stolen in locker rooms and soldiers reach for each other in their tents. In ten years of Sweet Mammalian it’s not all saccharine – piss rains down, lottery winners grow paranoid, and gloved hands palpate the innards of defrosted possums. We don’t even talk about what happened at the water tower. In wolflike pubescence, we may attain beach bodies or curl back into the shapes of embryos or whales. Come sit with us in the hot pool, a coven of poets cupped in cedar, this ever darkening water studded with stars.
Cover artwork:
‘I am always waking up from a long sleep’
by Saskia Bunce-Rath
Issue Ten contents:
Cover artist: Saskia Bunce-Rath
Sweet Mammalian’s tenth issue brings forth a bumper crop of beachside boys, disgruntled lottery winners, & a founders’ coven stargazing from a darkened spa. In pages fragrant with wood smoke and fungal spores, these poems span transcendental feeling & basest bodily functions. This year, our warm-hearted local literary journal celebrates its first decade of upstart verse with new work from a chorus of new & well-known poets.