NEW CHEERS FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

by Cecil Morris

Get a load of this: Columbia, Breakside unveil beer made from bear poop" —Oregon Public Broadcasting, January 28, 2026.

Bear scat—that’s bear crap 

to those of us not naturalists 
or bearded survivalists wise 
in the euphemisms of nature 
(or ursinus faeces if you 
prefer the snooty gloss of Latin 
or Pooh poop if you’re still child-like 
and delighted by certain sounds). 
Bear scat beer—a new lager called 
Nature Calls—is a wild brew infused 
with—dare I say it—shit collected 
in Montana, the big sky state, 
where a new breed of ranchers scour 
the land for the not-quite-gold gold 
and sell it to be fermented. 
I suppose the USDA 
does not inspect or certify 
for purity the scat in vats 
of yellow lager so you might 
be getting a foragers blend 
of deer droppings or raccoon turds. 
Does that matter? The real question: 
Would Norm drink it were it on tap?

Norm superimposed on Breakside.com screenshot.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, the Common Ground Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) came out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

LAST CALL

by Jane Blanchard

Scientists discovered a 2000-year-old white wine inside an urn that also contained a man's ashes in a Roman tomb in Spain. Photo: Juan Manuel Roman/ Journal of Archaeological Science via Yahoo! News, June 20, 2024

Morticians in the USA

could monetize this news

by marketing more options for

their customers to choose.

Pre-planners might prefer to go

with booze instead of wine,

and any brand of vodka, gin,

or bourbon would be fine.

Survivors might remember how

Big Daddy liked Bud Light,

but Mama went for Diet Coke

while Auntie favored Sprite.

Whatever is the beverage poured

into a funeral urn,

the ashes must be treated with

due measure of concern.

Jane Blanchard of Augusta, Georgia, has recent work in Light, Merion West, and Pulsebeat. Her latest collection with Kelsay Books is Metes and Bounds.

TRUMP IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, AGAIN

by Susan Cossette

Photograph by Mark Wilson / Getty via The New Yorker

It is Wednesday, 

another happy hour at the Chesterbird American Legion.
 
The usual suspects of retirees, widows, 
and slumming white collar workers shuffle in
to claim a spot at the sticky bar, 
a creaky chair at a wobbly table.
We buy bingo tickets, pull tabs, and cheese curds.
 
Tonight, the MAGA hats return,
worn bent brims, sweat stains on the cap.
Bearded men in Carhart workpants take selfies,
drink cheap American beer.
 
Make America Great and Glorious Again.
Gloating, they wait for new, improved, hats.
 
In the meantime, they disparage the “fucking Jews”
and the snowflake liberals.
 
In 1943, my Aunt Theresa was deported to Auschwitz,
greeted by Josef Mengele.
His leather crop pointed right, 
she went to the barracks.
Her head and pubic hair shaved by male SS.
She was 15.
 
Everyone who went right got the Zyklon B, 
her parents included.
Tourists regard the fingernail scratches on the cement walls 
under false shower heads.
 
I pay my bill, quietly,
tap one red-hat man on the shoulder
and tell him this story
and that perhaps he needs to reconsider hate speech
in public spaces 
because you never know who might be listening.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

SOME TOXIC ELEMENTS OF THE PATRIARCHY

by Emily Rock

Jack Ohman: Law & Order, Senate GOP

…were on display in the Senate as Ketanji Brown Jackson

faced down the Judiciary Committee

on the way to (please, let it be so) the Supreme Court.

 

Ghostly white Lindsey Graham, with his trademark drawl,

claimed “It’s about ‘we’re all racist’ if we ask hard questions.  

That’s not gonna fly with us.”

 

She was gracious: “I am happy to do whatever…”

she said as Chuck Grassley mumbled gruffly, interrupting her.

“No, that’s alright,” she said.  “I’m sorry.”

The Senator from Missouri said in his tweets

that Judge Jackson’s record on child pornography offenders

went “beyond soft on crime,” her record “endangers our children.”

 

She was calm: “As a judge and a mother, nothing

could be further from the truth.”

And she explained, though Josh Hawley deserved nothing

 

from her, that she told every criminal defendant

about the many victims' statements she received,

ensuring the child's perspective was heard in her court.

 

“When I look in the eyes of a defendant who is weeping,” she said,

 “I tell them about a victim who developed agoraphobia,

who thinks everyone she meets will have seen her pictures on the internet.”

 

I imagined an unflinching Jackson looking an offender in the eyes,

not softened by his tears—the sad sad tears of a man who has been caught,

which reminded me of her future colleague, Brett Kavanaugh:

 

how he cried during his own confirmation hearing,

how his emotional outbursts would be blamed on PMS

if he were a woman instead of a self-righteous white man.

 

Ketanji Brown Jackson said “I hope that you will see

how much I love our country, and our Constitution,”

and I recalled Kavanaugh repeating “I like beer.”

 

I thought of his victims, Christine Blasey Ford

and the others whose voices were not heard,

who watched their assailant weep

 

and go red in the face, defend his honor,

defend his entitlement to a seat

on the highest court—and prevail.

 

If Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed,

she will join two men who have been credibly accused

of crimes against women,

 

she will join a supermajority of aggressors

gleefully eviscerating Roe v. Wade,

stripping voting protections,

 

all while claiming the mantle

of Originalism, their philosophy

stuck in the 1700s with the slave-owning founders.

 

And yet, Republicans have tarred her 

with the absurd accusation

that she is somehow a threat to “our children.”

 

Whose children, I would ask Josh Hawley.

Whose children are threatened by a black woman 

with a gavel and a robe?

Emily Rock is an attorney and mother of two who lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

MY UKRAINIAN FAMILY

by Margaret D. Stetz

Sucking beer from bottles

shattering bottles in fists

punching drunk

strangling sober

seeing crucifixes as waste

of iron nails

better pried out and rammed into skulls

the Chernobility

of radioactive men—

torrents of blows

gales of curses

whipping winds

into a male-strom

pulverizing bodies

flattening weapons

sweeping clear

field city nation

Margaret D. Stetz, who is Ukrainian American, is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware. In the past year, her poems have appeared in journals such as Review Americana, Existere, Mono, A Plate of Pandemic, West Trestle Review, The Adriatic, and also in the Washington Post. 

LONDONER'S VOW

by Devon Balwit

Source: Twitter

I will not put my beer down.
Run me into the goddamn ground,
but I will finish the glass I earned
even as my old assumptions burn.
Over my tongue will slide the bitter
swallows, and I’ll return to pay the tab, better
than all destroying bastards. I’ll not
stay home tomorrow either, nor ought
you. Up and out to pubs and bridges,
resistance a sword, our presence its edges.


Devon Balwit teaches and writes in Portland, OR.

THE MILITARY DIET IS KILLING ME

by Sarah Frances Moran

Image source: The Military Diet

For breakfast I have a piece of toast with peanut butter.
My stomach grumbles 4 hours later.

For lunch I have crackers, cheese and an apple.
I drink one liter of water. I think, I might waste away
on this diet.

At dinner I have a portion of fish with two sides
of vegetables.
I cringe at the way the kitchen smells like someone passed gas
as the broccoli warms up.
I’m grumpy because I want a beer.
I’m grumpy because I want something more filling.

Three hours later as I lay in bed
My stomach begins making noises like an asteroid
has landed in the pit of it
and everything inside is on fire.
I think I’m dying.
I decide to eat whatever the fuck I want in the morning.

In the seconds while I dramaticize my hunger pains
6 people die.

The science of hunger is felt by 1 billion people.
I am not actually one of these people.

I’m sure one of these people lives in the same city as me.
I decide gluttony really is a sin.
More so than the popular sins in the news these days.

When I get up in the morning,
I do not eat whatever I want.

On my drive to work,
two grackles fight over left over something in the
middle of the road.
It is a fierce battle that nearly gets one of them hit by an
on-coming car.
My on-coming car.

I am hungry. My stomach turns.
I will not die fighting over food,

but I should concede to battle a hunger
larger than my small belly.

Small as a fist.

1 billion people won’t eat a fist full of food today.
Grackles fight over crumbs in the road.
6 people will die every minute because they have nothing to eat.
Our world is overflowing with tragedy…

but my largest tragedy
is I won’t get a beer today
I will not drink a beer today
I cannot drink a beer today

and I think I’m going to die.


Sarah Frances Moran is a stick-a-love-poem-in-your-back-pocket kind of poet. She thinks Chihuahuas should rule the world and prefers their company to people 90% of the time. Her work has most recently been published or is upcoming in Maudlin House, Blackheart Magazine, Red Fez and The Bitchin' Kitsch. She is Editor/Founder of Yellow Chair Review.