Leblon-Ipanema-Copacabana: Rio de Janeiro
Blessed
sand form of glass speckling clothes
insensate particle of
time you skirt
over
the earth flitting draping
O-cean insatiate being your salt waters divulge in our veins
creatures from the depths
The
energy field around your lofty-peaked
Mountains accumulate over time receiving sun’s rays
Trees miraculous lush—beacon of greenlight purespirit
cathedral of sounds august ethereal mindstrings
Eyelashes lips
earth mountains of breasts valleys of buttocks
magnificent g-strings entrusting all to look
Sun lifegiver
entreat us to love the earth as we all should
~
Rio
the river a name for a city
mistakenly named is tender
in the mornings
How
to find the names of places visited never revisited?
How
to shovel away at our lives to find the smallest particle representative of the
whole
what is dearest?
Backs
to sand we listen to dreams and
nightmares
The
smells of ocean sand &
sex at the beach
samba heart beating
Bodies
pulsating gyrating
Such delirious happiness
Cariocas cavort in preparation for Carnaval
Samba
music carries hips & buttocks throbbing at nanoseconds Cariocas feasting
on lyrics & sweaty
skin one another’s
touch beat within the beat musicians bleating throbbing
blowing strumming
~
So many colors under the
sun so many suns: Portuguese moonskin
potatochipskin mulatto skin black skin & the world
sees itself a mosaic of
flaming rain
Garota de Ipanema a cheap joint where artists sit & drink
to death
next to hills that jut
into air
of mist & men &
women running
~
Not
of this earth both dead & alive
closest
to the gods to God crosses borders walking on water
A life led in many places
simultaneously
Leblon is the most affluent neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with neighboring Ipanema, to its east, as the second most affluent. Ipanema is from the Tupi language and possibly means "stinky lake" (upaba ["lake"] and nem ["stinky"]) or "bad water; river without fish" (y [water] and panema [bad]). The word did not originally refer to the beach, but to the São Paulo home of José Antonio Moreira Filho, Baron of Ipanema, who owned most of it. Ipanema has long played a role in the city's culture, with its own universities, art galleries, theaters, and cafes, and it hold a separate street parade during Carnival festivities, the Banda de Ipanema, attracting some 50,000 people. Posto 9, a section of the beach around the #9 lifeguard station, has a long history of public pot smoking, police raids, and gatherings of left-wing intellectuals. Beyond Ipanema are two small beaches, Diabo ("Devil") and Arpoador, where surfers go in search of perfect waves, followed by Copacabana, the other world-famous beach in Rio, which also took its original name from Tupi: Sacopenapã ("the way of the socós," a bird, but was renamed in the mid-18th century after the construction of a chapel holding a replica of the Virgen de Copacabana, Bolivia's patron saint. In the 1930s, the 4-km Copacabana promenade was built as a large-scale geometric-wave pavement landscape designed by Roberto Burle Marx. The New Years fireworks display there is one of the world's largest, lasting 15 to 20 minutes and attracting 2 million observers; these celebrations started in the 1950s when Afro-Brazilian cults such as Candomblé and Umbanda gathered in small groups to worship, but the first fireworks display did not occur until 1976.
ReplyDeleteMong-Lan, writer, former Stegner Fellow at Stanford Univ, Fulbright Scholar, has published six books of poetry & artwork, two chapbooks, has won prizes such as the Juniper Prize and the Pushcart Prize. Poems have been included in numerous anthologies such as Best American Poetry Anthology. She is currently finishing a novel, with an excerpt forthcoming in the North American Review. Mong-Lan plays the piano and guitar, sings in five languages, and also writes songs. Her nine albums of jazz piano and tangos also showcase her poetry. As a visual artist, Mong-Lan has had her paintings and photographs exhibited in museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art and galleries in the U.S., and in public exhibitions in Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, Bali and Buenos Aires. Visit her website: http://www.monglan.com
ReplyDeleteThanks Duane!
ReplyDeleteThis poem is from my latest book, One Thousand Minds Brimming: poetry & art. And also on my CD, Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz Piano. You can check it all out on my website, http://www.monglan.com Yuurs truly, Mong-Lan
Thanks, Lan. It is indeed a privilege to have you aboard. We all hope you can inundate us with writing, pictures, music.....
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