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
She said she collects pieces of sky, cuts holes out of it with silver scissors, bits of heaven she calls them. Every day a bevy of birds flies rings around her fingers, my chorus of wives, she calls them. Every day she reads poetry from dusty books she borrows from the library, sitting in the park, she smiles at passing strangers, yet can not seem to shake her own sad feelings. She said that night reminds her of a cool hand placed gently across her fevered brow, said she likes to fall asleep beneath the stars, that their streaks of light make her believe that she too is going somewhere. Infinity, she whispers as she closes her eyes, descending into thin air, where no arms outstretch to catch her
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)
From the Back of the Wardrobe 