A COUP DOH! TO BRAZIL

by Steven Kent

ID 259791971 | Bolsonaro © Alf Ribeiro | Dreamstime.com

"Jailhouse shock: Brazil coup monger Bolsonaro finally faces life behind bars" —The Guardian, November 20, 2025

There's a shift in opinion: Today

Bolsominions indignantly say

Jails are too inhumane,

Though they've made it quite plain

Up till now that's the only Right way.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

CO'VID-AS'

by L.A. Pontes

An anti-government demonstrator wearing a protective face mask holds a poster representing a coffin of a victim of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) with the message "30,000 deaths, so what?", during a protest named "Amazonas for Democracy" in Manaus, Brazil, June 2, 2020. © REUTERS/Bruno Kelly via France 24, June 2, 2020

The face of the infamous man is painted in black with red dripping fangs on the tall walls of the house on the corner.
"Fora Bolsonaro!" with the colors of the rainbow.
As the pans bang in every window—the ‘panelaco’ hour—the little girl fights with the dogs for bones tossed on the empty streets. The dogs are dying alone.
Her dark skin shows ghostly on orange lights.
She wears no mask, her face is empty.
The "little flue" had made a ghost out of her stoned mother and enemies out of friends. Mother stands tall in her grave.
Manoela climbs the tree on the corner and chews the splintered bone. She wished she had fangs like the monster.

L.A. Pontes is a Brazilian writer living with his wife and six dogs on the bushy outskirts near the city of Belo Horizonte. His writing has appeared in LITRO UK. He shares with all conscious Brazilian citizens a deep disgust with the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

THE BIG PICTURE

by Devon Balwit

The destruction of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil has increased rapidly since the nation’s new far-right president took over and his government scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, ranching and mining. —The New York Times, July 28, 2019. Photo: Deforestation in the Western Amazon region of Brazil.CreditCarl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images via The New York Times

The Amazon is ours, not yours, he says,
as if our fates could remain distinct, as if
his clearcutting didn’t squeeze
the air from our lungs, as if the surf

didn’t tumble trash from all continents
into the same vortex, as if our reefs
could keep their brightness despite vents
elsewhere off-gassing. It’s grief

I feel as he smiles and shakes hands with
his environmental minister. So happy
they seem to defraud the children of both
hemispheres of green. His economy

will rise but briefly before it fails,
as our shared earth sears and pales.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in here as well as in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Rattle among others.