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The Queer Issue V

June 2014

june-2014-the-queer-issue-volume-v-lee-relvas-hags

Image: Lee Relvas, "Hags," 2009. Gouache on paper, 15 in. by 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Image: Lee Relvas, “Hags,” 2009. Gouache on paper, 15 in. by 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.

This June we present the fifth installment of our annual queer issue. We’ve gathered a group from all corners of the world to celebrate this milestone with us. From Colombia, Alberto Salcedo Ramos gets in league with the queens of soccer, while Taiwan’s Qiu Miaojin pens fiery, lyrical dispatches from Montmartre. Belgium’s Stéphane Lambert paints a nostalgic portrait of a teenage friendship, and Iranian writer Ghazal Mosadeq’s beleaguered asylum seeker finds himself at a crossroads in France. From Israel (via Brooklyn), graphic artist Miki Golod blends memories of army service with a snowbound New York, while Spain’s Elvira Tobío frames a carnal appetite in haiku form. Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s protagonist dwells on a foundering relationship from the dentist’s chair, while Algerian Rachid Boudjedra’s Olympian falls in love with a student. From Mexico, Javier Malpica reads us entries from a coming-of-age diary, while Russia’s Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina dwells on the allure of youth.

The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train

By Rohan Kamicheril

The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.

Queens Football

By Alberto Salcedo Ramos

“You’re so gay you even want to get it on with men in cartoon strips!”

Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

from “Last Words from Montmartre”

Dusk in the Latin Quarter was like a fairy tale or a love poem, like a Klimt mosaic, like glowing, rose-colored clouds reaching toward the heavens.

Translated from Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich

from “My Body Laid Bare”

By Stéphane Lambert

My face was more akin to Florentine portraits of androgynous ephebes than to paintings of ancient heroes.

Translated from French by Paul Curtis Daw

Ney Boulevard

By Ghazal Mosadeq

“Your problem is that you say you are gay but have never seen a gay guy in your entire life.”

Translated from Farsi by Lida Nosrati

Learn

Full Body Scan

“Do you know anyone who died in the army?”

Translated by the author

from “Carnia Haikai”

By Elvira Riveiro Tobío

An omnivorous poet, / I eat everything.

Translated from Galician by Adrian Nathan West

Cavities and Kindness

By Nao-Cola Yamazaki

It was almost Christmas, I had a cavity, and I was in the process of getting dumped.

Translated from Japanese by Kalau Almony

Learn

from “Spring”

By Rachid Boudjedra

In fact, Teldj no longer felt anything at all. She only pretended to. She only thought about Algeria.

Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely

from “Adam’s Apple”

By Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina

His skin and hair gave off an intoxicating scent of apples.

Translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield

For Nina

By Javier Malpica

I opened it and wrote the first date, and what would be the first chapter of that extraordinary life that was my own.

Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel