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I saw my name printed under a nude picture.
I am a missing girl,
Living far from his ruins.

He wants to find me,
He who gave me a plate,
He who found me a shelter.

I obeyed him blindly,
he demanded my body to belong,
I gave him my soul mistakenly.

He drew a line
A line I despised,
A line I couldn’t cross.

One night a quake fractured my wall,
but my portraits didn’t fall.
They disappeared one by one,
He got richer,
neglecting the fracture on my soul.

When I asked him to kiss me,
He said why?
I said no reason.
He said he liked me more when I was shy.
I told him my secret:
“A mountain is growing on my back.”
He asked me to be quiet
I was not there to cross the line.

I stayed young in his portraits,
He grew old,
Until the wall collapsed one night.

He lay beside me unconscious,
I stared at his closed eyes,
I knew then there was never love between us.
We were buried alive,
Breathing became our desire for affluence.

When I woke him up,
he climbed the mountain on my back,
We stayed in the ruin until dawn.
The mountain was now gone.
My back was free,
I could stand tall.

He looked into my eyes,
“Why did everything have to change?
You are here on the ground level,
Your portraits down below,
Run! Fetch me help!”

I kissed his lips and ran out there in the field.
I heard he is still searching,
and I am still missing.



Niloufar-Lily Soltani is a Canadian poet, literary translator, and fiction writer. Her poems and translated work have been published in literary magazines. Her debut novel, Zulaikha, will be published by Inanna Publications in spring 2022. Lily is a Humber College creative writing graduate and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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22 Apr 2024

We’d been on holiday at the Shoon Sea only three days when the incident occurred. Dr. Gar had been staying there a few months for medical research and had urged me and my friend Shooshooey to visit.
...
Tu enfiles longuement la chemise des murs,/ tout comme d’autres le font avec la chemise de la mort.
The little monster was not born like a human child, yelling with cold and terror as he left his mother’s womb. He had come to life little by little, on the high, three-legged bench. When his eyes had opened, they met the eyes of the broad-shouldered sculptor, watching them tenderly.
Le petit monstre n’était pas né comme un enfant des hommes, criant de froid et de terreur au sortir du ventre maternel. Il avait pris vie peu à peu, sur la haute selle à trois pieds, et quand ses yeux s’étaient ouverts, ils avaient rencontré ceux du sculpteur aux larges épaules, qui le regardaient tendrement.
We're delighted to welcome Nat Paterson to the blog, to tell us more about his translation of Léopold Chauveau's story 'The Little Monster'/ 'Le Petit Monstre', which appears in our April 2024 issue.
For a long time now you’ve put on the shirt of the walls,/just as others might put on a shroud.
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