A VAST SHROUD

by Trina Gaynon

The late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen here smiling during a 2021 court appearance, never lost his sense of optimism and joie de vivre behind bars, says Ilia Krasilshchik, a Russian journalist who exchanged letters with him in prison. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images via CBC).

If they’re told to feed you caviar tomorrow, they’ll feed you caviar. 

If they’re told to strangle you in your cell, they’ll strangle you.

                                                                                    

Aleksei A. Navalny

Excerpt from letter to Ilia Krasilshchik

 

Exile begins when the law is broken.

Don’t let them tell you your arrest

will be followed by a bail hearing.

There will only be bank accounts seized

and a shuffling between prisons,

There will only be a pen and paper,

sometimes held up to prison windows

by your attorneys, sometimes transmitted

through an outdated digital system.

Don’t let them tell you there will be

a trial, an impartial jury, an unbiased judge.

There will only be executioners slipping 

poison into your tea, shoving a knife

into vital organs as you walk the streets,

or releasing a little nerve gas in your cell.

Don’t let them tell you death will erase you,

every sacrifice in vain. Call out the lie.

 

Trina Gaynon's poems recently appeared in Poetry East, Tomahawk Creek Review, and Clepsydra. More can be found in The Power of the Feminine I, Volume 1,  Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, other anthologies, numerous journals, and a chapbook An Alphabet of Romance from Finishing Line. She received an MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco. A past volunteer for literacy programs in local libraries and WriteGirl in Los Angeles, she currently leads a group of poetry readers at the Senior Studies Institute in Portland.

A VOICE FOR NAVALNY

by Charise M. Hoge

Irina Ratushinskaya in 1986. Photo by Jane Bown/The Observer.

What would Irina say,
Irina Ratushinskaya,
poet in a prison camp
in 1983?

She saved her art
with a matchstick
and soap––
carving stanzas,
committing
to memory,
washing
away evidence.

Would she capture
the omissions,
the dying brilliance,
as she did the pattern
of frost from the gulag?
 
Would she take
the matchstick
of our outrage?

Would she put
soap in the mouth
of untruth?


Charise M. Hoge is a dance/movement therapist, writer, and performing artist. She is the author of Striking Light from Ashes and Muse in a Suitcase. Her poetry is also featured in Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers (edited by David Lehman, Cornell University Press), as well as various journals. Charise is poet-in-residence for Art on Cullers Run (Mathias, West Virginia) and Art All Night H Street (Washington, DC). 

PASSED PAWNS

by Dave Day

Russian President Vladimir Putin's "grave mistake" to invade Ukraine may yet foment popular or elite rebellion, Leonid Volkov, chief of staff of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has told Newsweek, as Moscow's offensive stalls and international sanctions bite.

Navalny’s pawn moved forward two,

While Putin scanned the board’s positions.

The Bishops dare not stage a coup,

To grovel slips them fat commissions.

 

The Knights are paid, their horses watered.

They follow oaths to wanton slaughter.

The oligarchs are faithful crooks,

And perfect stand-ins for the Rooks.

 

His Queen? Ukraine ran off with Europe.

Cuckold Putin, cuckold grief,

He Novichok’ed Navalny’s briefs.

But *hush-hush* Putin’s eyes, they welled up.

 

The game’s not lost, Kasparov wrote.

What happens when the Pawns promote?

Dave Day is an attorney from Honolulu, Hawaii, and is a numismatist who focuses on currency from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Dave has published poetry in The Ekphrastic Review and extremely nonpoetic articles in the Emory International Law Review and the Hawaii Bar Journal.

HANDS

by Ruth Lehrer

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny makes a heart gesture with his hands while in a cage in the Moscow City Court on Tuesday. His suspended sentence from his 2014 criminal conviction was ultimately converted to a prison term. (Press Service of Simonovsky District Court/Handout/Reuters via CBC)

He’s in a glass box right now they call it the aquarium we can’t hear him 

    can he hear us

the judge pretends to read judgment the news already knows already 

    prints her words

before they exit her mouth leave her tongue like a corrupt mind meld 

    two years eight

months in a prison colony with his silent hands he flashes a heart to his wife 

    who takes

off her mask and waves.

Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the novel Being Fishkill and the poetry chapbook Tiger Laughs When You Push.