Thrush Poetry Journal
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Vanessa Couto Johnson
​

Brasil & broil
                        August 2019
 
There is nothing like being a continent
 
away from my scorching motherland.
 
|
 
Almost a year ago flames took
Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro,
 
over two centuries of artifact
gathering gone. A firefighter’s hands
 
burned in want to save Luzia’s bones,
11,500 years beloved, skull with luck
 
to be found later in fragment. Oh ancestor—​
if you could see how much human failure
 
hurts all these days.
 
|
 
Sou uma filha da Amazônia.
 
I am a daughter of the Amazon.
 
I’ve seen the Encontro das Águas,
grown on her fish and fruit for many
summers. And now a river with fire
 
among it more than ever. Season of the burning.
 
Century. Era. Of logger and farm
 
in nation named for a tree.
 
|
 
To tweak from Lorca: Amazônia que se quero verde.
 
The norm of the modern is somnambulism. Our curse
to know the problem and share and
nothing seem doable.
 
In this case, don’t light a candle.
 
There are few prayers I really believe in.
 
The swiftness of amphibians finding damp.
 
|
 
I want a prayer of fruits:       uma Oração das Frutas
 
açaí                  mamão             abacate
 
          abacaxí            cupuaçu           goiaba
 
guaraná           tucumã            graviola
 
        maracujá            acerola             maça de cajú
 
I want a prayer of fruits          I may never eat again. 



​
Vanessa Couto Johnson is the author of Pungent dins concentric, her first full-length book (Tolsun Books, 2018), and three chapbooks, most recently speech rinse (Slope Editions’ 2016 Chapbook Contest winner). Her sixteen-page sequence “Try the yen relish” is in Oxidant | Engine’s BoxSet vol. 1. A previous contributor to Thrush, she has also had poems appear in Foundry, Softblow, Field, Blackbird, and other journals and anthologies. A Brazilian born in Texas (dual citizen), she has taught at Texas State University since 2014.




​Return to November 2019 Edition