by Lisa Zaran
All day the small boy I love enters manhood.
Grows muscles. Outlives the burdens of drugs and
heartbreak. Soon he will outlive the birds, outlive the
limbs supporting the birds, outlive me, his mother, a
storm-worn dove. The small boy I love, wrung from
silence, finds his own voice. Sings from his own self
the transparencies of others with the candor of a child
beyond the miseries of adulthood. The small boy I love
arches the hours, speaks in rivulets sparkling gold and
silver. Every ordinary morning, the small boy I love
leaves like a train departing a station. The poem I write
reads like a mother, frantic and theatrical, white scarf
waving in the open air.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Lisa Zaran was born in 1969 in Los Angeles, California. She is an American poet, essayist and the author of seven collections including If It We, The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. Subsequently published to German in 2006 under the title: das manchmal mädchen. Selections from her other books have been translated to Bangla, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, German, Dutch, Persian and Serbian. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, magazines, broadsides, anthologies and e-zines
Last updated October 29, 2012