Poet: Lisa Zaran
Born: 26 September 1969, California, USA
Nationality: American

Zaran is a poet, essayist, and editor of Contemporary American Voices. She is best known for her collection of poetry ‘The Sometimes Girl’ (2004).

One of four children Zaran’s parents were of Norwegian origin. She moved over 40 times across the western USA and Alaska before the age of 16, attending both public and private schools as well as Lutheran and Christian academies. Throughout her youth, Zaran spent time reading poetry and listening to music through the closed door of her older brother’s bedroom. The poetic influences from her youth include James Whitcomb Riley, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and the Bible, with musical influences from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mozart, and Pavarotti. Zaran wrote her first poem “Hallway” at the age of six. Throughout her high school years, Zaran contributed anonymously to her local high school paper.

Zaran married in 1990 and had two children in the following two years. She began writing “The Sometimes Girl” (2004) in the early years of her marriage, a collection noted for saying the right thing at all times. Soon after its publication Zaran emerged as a poet who allowed infinite access to her core with works such as “Talking to My Father Whose Ashes Sit in the Closet and Listen,” “Girl,” and “Tenderness.”

In 2004 Zaran published “You Have a Lovely Heart,” a chapbook exploring the beautiful landscape of Southwestern Arizona.

In 2005 Zara released a 22-poem collection online at Argonauts’ Boat, as a prelude into her next full collection ‘The Blondes Lay Content’ (2006). She also published ‘Subtraction Flower’ (2006) a chapbook she dedicated to her mother.

Zaran’ continues to publish work in magazines, ezines, journals, and anthologies across the globe.

You Are the Mountain by Lisa Zaran

At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.

I watch you sometimes
when you don’t know I’m watching
and I see you. Who you are.

You are a self made man.
Hard suffering. You are grey
stone and damp earth.
A long scar on a pale sky.

The television is tuned to CNN.
The world’s tragedies flicker
across your face like some
foreign film.

You are expressionless.
Your usual gestures ground to salt.

How do you explain yourself
to people that do not know you?
How do you explain to them,
this is me; that is not me.

However many words you choose
in whatever context with
whichever adjectives you use
could not compare.

Even you describing you
would not be you.
Not totally.

Your hands are folded
together, resting in your lap.
I study those hands until
every groove becomes familiar.

Like a favorite hat,
you wear your silence
comfortably.

I sometimes can not help
but wonder what we will
talk about if we ever
run out of things to say.

You are the curve
I burrow into. The strength
I borrow. You are the red sun
rising over the mountain.
You are the mountain