The body knew before the poll did. My jaw has been clenched since Friday, and I woke with a copper taste at the root of my tongue — the flavor of a country grinding its teeth in sleep. Friday was the day the bloated grifter stood in Florida and announced — casually, the way a man orders a sandwich — that the U.S. would take over Cuba "almost immediately," aircraft carrier offshore once Iran was wrapped. He signed an executive order the same day expanding Cuba sanctions. That sentence sits under everything else in this issue.

Survival tactic for today: Before you open a single tab, press your bare feet to the floor and count five long exhales. The administration wants your nervous system. You are going to keep it.

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Atlanta: 76°, hazy and rinsed — dogwood petals brown-edged on the sidewalk where children walked to school

Detroit: 64°, breeze off the river — a man in a Carhartt eating breakfast on a stoop, watching the city wake

Kansas City: 71°, thunder building west — pressure that makes the dog refuse her food and lie down in the hallway

New York: 68°, sun through grit — early lilac on a Brooklyn fire escape, planted by someone who has not given up

San Francisco: 58°, fog burning off slow — bridge cables sweating cold water onto the cars beneath

Miami: 84°, humid before noon — that Florida wet that makes a shirt cling before you've crossed the parking lot

Tha am Bealltainn air tighinn — Beltaine has come — and the wheel turns toward the long light. The honeysuckle along Ponce de Leon opened over the weekend.

First time here? Welcome.

Editor's note: The fecal-tongued empire has lost the room — which is when these motherfuckers get the most dangerous. The same Friday the disapproval numbers cratered, the obscene buffoon told a Florida crowd we'd be taking over fucking Cuba "almost immediately" — aircraft carrier offshore, executive order signed before lunch. That is a cornered animal flinging the nearest sovereign nation at the wall to see what sticks.

What ShitPantsy Asswaddle said: Trump previously claimed he "won" the issue of affordability while insisting that inflation amid the war would not last for long.

The narcissistic spray-tan messy babydiaper is presiding over a country that has stopped pretending. Seventy-two percent disapprove of his handling of inflation — a seven-point jump in two months. Seventy-six percent disapprove on cost of living. On the Iran war he launched in February, sixty-six percent disapprove. The kleptocratic cabal sold a fairy tale about cheap eggs and easy victories, and the country now stands in a gas station watching the pump hit a four-year high while somebody's grandmother decides which medication to skip.

The damage:

Cost of living: Gas at four-year highs. Core inflation hit 3.5% in March — a two-year peak.

Pattern: Democrats now hold a five-point House advantage, up from two in February — nine among voters absolutely certain to vote.

Action: You register if you haven't. You drag three friends to the polls. The poll itself.

A cornered animal is the most dangerous animal alive, and we live now in a country where the animal in the Oval Office has nowhere left to run.

Evidence:

Mechanism: If passed, the bill would shift whales from "exploitable natural resources" to right-bearing entities — rights to freedom of movement, healthy environment, habitat restoration, protected social structures. Twenty-two percent of New Zealand's whales and indigenous marine mammals are threatened with extinction.

Indigenous foundation: The bill culminates years of advocacy by Pacific Indigenous peoples — in 2024, Polynesian Indigenous leaders signed the He Whakaputanga Moana Declaration, the Declaration for the Ocean.

While the authoritarian-wannabe tyrant in Washington signs orders to gut every protection that ever held a corporation accountable, a country at the bottom of the Pacific is deciding that a sperm whale is a person. Read the bill.

The land has always known what we are pretending to discover.

Stakes:

Pattern: The Trump DOJ has opened civil rights investigations into 36 Illinois school districts over how schools handle lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Timeline: The probes examine whether districts gave parents proper opt-out rights from what the administration calls "sexual orientation and gender ideology" — and whether transgender students access facilities and sports teams aligning with their gender identity.

The pustulent charlatan's Department of Justice has decided the existence of a queer family in a children's book is a civil rights violation. Officials cited no specific incidents prompting the probes. They didn't need to. The investigation is the punishment — districts will fold preemptively, teachers will self-censor, librarians will pull books rather than fight a federal probe with a school board's legal budget. Critics say the investigations risk framing LGBTQ+ inclusion as legal liability rather than support. That's not a risk. That's the goal.

Movement: Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Illinois, and Equality Illinois have signaled coordinated pushback. Story here.

A child reading a book about a family that looks like hers is not a crime. The state that calls it one is the one that needs answering for.

The teacher in Rockford has been here before. So has the librarian, and the eighth-grader who keeps a flag in her locker. The DOJ probe is not a new instrument. It is the old instrument, dressed in fresh paperwork. The body knows the sound of a federal letter the way a deer knows a footstep — and surviving the last hunt is not the same as being safe in the next.

What have you witnessed this week that you have not yet found the words to name?

Sit. Both feet flat. One hand on the chest, one on the belly. Notice the May air — pollen and gasoline and dogwood and something almost like rain that hasn't decided yet.

The wheel has turned. Tha sinn aig Bealltainn — we are at Beltaine — and the old fires are lit somewhere, even if not in our hearths. Today's news asked your nervous system to absorb a country in slow collapse, and your body did what bodies do: it braced.

Cuir do làmh air do bhroilleach — put your hand on your chest — and feel the heart has not stopped. The earth beneath your feet has been here through every empire that ever called itself eternal, and she will be here through this one, holding the bones of the ones who fought back and the ones who were tender and the ones who were both at once.

Spring asparagus, roasted at 425° for ten minutes → Olive oil, lemon zest, flake salt. The spears bend when you bite them but still snap at the base. The first asparagus is the season making itself known on the plate.

Grow scallions in a jar on the windowsill → Save white root ends from a grocery bunch, stand them in two inches of water, change every three days. The green keeps coming. The kitchen is the smallest sovereign territory you will ever defend.

Pantry quick: apple-cider vinegar slaw over fried eggs for four → Four large eggs. One head cabbage, shredded fine. Two carrots, grated. Half cup apple cider vinegar. Two tablespoons sugar. One tablespoon mustard. Salt. Vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt whisked until dissolved. Cabbage, carrots tossed until wilted. Eggs fried sunny-side up, yolks runny. Slaw piled high, egg cracked on top. Five minutes.

Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) Pharmacology: Nervine acting on GABA receptors — calming without sedation. For anxiety that lives in the upper chest. Use: Tincture, 30–60 drops in water, two to three times daily. Tea: one teaspoon per cup, steeped covered fifteen minutes. Caution: Interacts with sedatives, benzodiazepines, lithium. Avoid in pregnancy. Some commercial skullcap has been adulterated with hepatotoxic germander — buy from herbalists you trust.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) Pharmacology: Astringent and styptic. Stops bleeding on contact, modulates blood flow, breaks fevers through sweating. Use: Fresh leaves crushed onto a wound. Tea, one teaspoon per cup, fifteen minutes, drunk hot. Caution: Avoid in pregnancy — stimulates uterine contractions. Amplifies blood-thinners. Asteraceae allergies will react.

Dandelion root (Taraxacum officinale) Pharmacology: Hepatoprotective bitter, supports phase-one and phase-two liver detoxification. Mild diuretic. Use: Decoction — one tablespoon dried root simmered fifteen minutes in two cups water. Mornings, two-week courses. Caution: Avoid with active gallstones — bile flow can dislodge them painfully. Mild interactions with lithium and certain diuretics.

Long exhales with a counted hold → Inhale four. Hold four. Exhale six. Hold two. Ten rounds. The longer exhale signals the vagus nerve that the threat has passed. Tha do chorp a' cuimhneachadh — your body remembers — that you have always known how to come down from a fight.

Name three things that did not change today → A texture on a wall. A song you knew before you knew you were queer. The shape of someone's hand on a coffee cup. The mind builds its case for staying alive out of small, particular things.

Send one text → To someone you have not heard from in a week. I was thinking of you. Connection is the only nervous system regulator that does not run out of batteries.

There are people who survive by going still and people who survive by burning, and most of us — seo an fhìrinn, here's the truth — do both, depending on the week. Today asked us to hold a 62% disapproval rating against a federal probe of third-grade libraries against a Pacific bill that calls a whale a person. The practice is not in choosing the right response. The practice is in staying recognizable to yourself.

What are you willing to keep doing even when you no longer know if it's working?

These are not saints. They are people who decided.

Jericho Brown — Won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Tradition. Black, queer, HIV-positive, the inventor of the duplex — a form that fuses sonnet, ghazal, and blues. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Emory, and his work refuses the false comfort of the redemptive arc and insists on the harder grace of survival.

Carl Phillips — Won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Then the War, after fifteen-plus books. Black, queer, classically trained, he writes a syntax that feels like watching someone think and arrive somewhere true.

Sarah Waters — Welsh novelist whose Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith rebuilt the historical novel as a queer instrument. Three of her novels became BAFTA-nominated television.

Bright Signals:

New Zealand Whale Bill: Pacific whales may gain legal personhood — legislation that rewrites the metaphysics underneath the law.

Democratic House lead widens: Five-point national advantage, nine among likely voters.

Spring planting: Community gardens in Atlanta, Detroit, and Brooklyn breaking ground this week.

What these writers and signals share: a refusal to let the official story be the only story.

What the body knows tonight: the lie of this administration is breaking under its own weight, and the breaking will not be quick or clean. The 62% is real. The probes are real. The whale bill is real — agus tha sinn fhathast an seo, and we are still here — holding our hands open to whichever we can carry, trusting the people next to us to carry the rest.

What does survival look like, specifically, in your body, tomorrow morning before the sun is fully up?

Stand if you can. Touch the ground one final time — the floor counts.

Tha thu air do chuairteachadh leis an talamh — you are surrounded by the earth — and she has carried heavier than this. The honeysuckle is in. The whales are listening. The teacher in Rockford has not taken the book down. Carry today the way the river carries spring snowmelt: not by holding it, but by letting it move through you.

Beannachd Dhè ort, agus beannachd na talmhainn fo do chasan. The blessing of the earth upon you, and the blessing of the ground beneath your feet.

The voices woven into this work:

🌿 Poetry and Feelings: thepoetmiranda.com
🌿 Personal Queer Journey: thistleandfern.org
🌿 Life Banter: brandonellrich.substack.com
🌿 Lisa's Porch Talk: wuzzittoya.org / wuzzittoya.substack.com
🌿 Presence Not Permission: presencenotpermission.beehiiv.com

Become a member: thistleandmoss.com/upgrade