State Department suspends consular help in Brazil over 'security concerns,' not its own campaign for Bolsonaro's son.

The Poet A father's name, passed down whether earned or not. I have been saying the same about my own verses for years, and nobody has sent a letter about it.

The Punk Nobody sends letters round here either. We send the landlord round, and he sends himself a text back.

Monday, those three senators — Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine and Peter Welch — wrote to Secretary Rubio warning against meddling in the vote. By Wednesday, Reuters had Brazil's own spy agency confirming "the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia," ahead of Sunday's first round.

The Hippie Confirming. That's a grand word for what the landlord did about the boiler, which was nothing, loudly, for months.

The Fixer Boilers I could move. Spy agencies, rather less so, though I'd still take a cut off either, if someone's buying.

Fold in, that same week, Truthout's account of an administration "heavily intervening" on behalf of the challenger, and France 24's description of Flávio Bolsonaro as "less charismatic than his father but just as ideologically radical as the family patriarch." The New York Post had Brazilian voters saying the incumbent was turning the country into "another Venezuela."

Then the embassy's own alert: consular services suspended "starting today, October 2 due to security concerns." By Friday the counter was closed, days before the polls opened.

The BBC has it, plainly, as a question: "Why has Brazil accused the US of election interference?" At home, the State Department's alert gives the reason as "security concerns." Brazil's own spy agency had already used the other word.

The Fixer Another word. I could print the two of them on either side of a T-shirt and sell it outside whichever embassy's still open.

You will be looking for the charge this becomes, the law it breaks. There is no such charge yet; there is only the question the BBC is printing, and the alert the embassy has not elaborated on.

Take the alert by both ends and turn it over. Underneath is a date, October 2, and a vote, October 4, with no named threat between.

A security alert does not need a reason that survives past Sunday. It only needs to survive until the polls close.

It serves the challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, whose campaign the department has spent months leaning toward. Brazil pays in a shuttered consular counter, days before its own first round.

The Poet First round. I have been saying for years that the best lines never survive to the second.