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.

SMALL VICTORIES

by M. Benjamin Thorne

Two Russian poets have been handed long jail sentences for taking part in a reading of anti-war poems in Moscow. A Moscow court gave Artyom Kamardin seven years and Yegor Shtovba five and a half years for "inciting hatred" against Russian troops and making "appeals against state security". Both had pleaded not guilty… A third poet who had taken part in the poetry reading, Nikolai Dayneko, was given a four-year sentence earlier this year after pleading guilty and co-operating with the investigation. —BBC, December 28, 2023. Photo: Russian poets Artyom Kamardin (L) and Yegor Shtovba (R) stand inside the defendants' glass cage as the verdict against them is announced at a court in Moscow, on December 28, 2023 [Alexander Nemenov/ AFP via AlJazeera]

Artyom Kamardin, the scuttling hands
of Putin’s comrade army clutched you away.  
Yegor Shtovba, they broke you in prison, brutally 

shoved their weakness inside you. 

Today they sought to silence freedom,
and tonight Akhmatova’s ghost screams.

 

All for the crime of poetry. A few words
that sat heavily in public, burning
like Chernobyl rubble, glowing in the dark.
What will their half-life be?
Already the rallied crowd shuffles
back into quiet anonymity.
Who bows their head lower now                  
in shame, them or Pushkin?
Where are the souls so moved
reciting Eugene Onegin from memory?
Where the fierce courageous applause
that followed Shostakovich and Yevtushenko?
Freedom is still a young and starving child,
will you like Tsvetaeva give her to the state to die?
Why grieve for fallen soldiers
when you murder them at home?

Perhaps their poems were as meaningless
as Soviet ration cards for milk past 10 am,
or victory claimed in a burned-out village.
One poem may not change the world.
But words are radioactive and once heard
can decay the most calcified mind’s
defenses. Perhaps the sense of resistance
is not to succeed, but inspire others to resist.
A poem may change the world for one person.

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. As an historian and poet, he is interested in what—and how—societies choose to remember and forget traumatic episodes from the past. He has poems forthcoming from Topical Poetry and The Main Street Rag.

WHERE TRUTH AND THREAT TANGLE IN KNOTS OF NO NAME

by Jen Schneider

Judge Donna Scott Davenport during a 2017 deposition. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio.

Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge: Judge Donna Scott Davenport oversees a juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with a staggering history of jailing children. She said kids must face consequences, which rarely seem to apply to her or the other adults in charge. —Meribah Knight, Nashville Public Radio, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica, October 8, 2021

tiny babies on metal swings,

toss rubber balls on concrete

tiny babies clothed in fabric

of NBA stars & NBC scenes

chalk words on concrete

tiny babies entrusted

to institutions of unknown pores

& unsuspecting wills

serve time on concrete

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold benches

cold eyes

filters everywhere

 

tiny babies on metal cots

fight demons of demonstrative

power & fail to sleep

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold lots (& bots)

cold plots

filters everywhere

 

dark curtains blanket lives

& squash truths

dark curtains conceal filters

& give breadth to those who

struggle to breathe

journals fail not to reveal

false truths. journalists

fight to reveal hidden truths

 

NO

           1. __ 2. __ 3. __

 

cold data

cold calls

filters everywhere

 

as locks turn right

& shifts (shifty eyes) turn left

truths & threats tangle

in knots (& playground lots) of no name

time ticks. clocks run.colds (& charges) linger.

tiny babies of metal

fences take charge. document false charges.

tally lives on indefinite pause

& subject to indeterminate pain

judicial oaths & pledges

of allegiance

stream syllables of familiar

themes

1. Liberty 2. Justice 3. All

& strings of familiar

knots

1. Truth 2. Transparency 3. All

& cracks of familiar

ideals

1. Peace 2. Fairness 3. All

frayed fibers, tangled twine

false/falsified/fabricated (truths, charges, crimes)  

true fear (& dark curtains) everywhere

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).