Before I read Brian Teare’s poem, “Doomstead Days,” I had never heard of a doomstead. It’s a clever portmanteau, combining homestead with doomsday: an alternative universe where the homestead is a preparation for the climate apocalypse.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

The poem Brian weaves around his encounter with this word is a lyrical romp through our connection to land, water, and each other. Water flows, gender is fluid, and the rigid binaries of our imaginations dissolve.

Brian’s exploration of the doomstead unearths some vital questions about ecological crisis. How do we respond? How are we, as a society, fleeing to our doomsteads and hiding, waiting for disaster, hoping to survive? What does it look like for us to leave our doomsteads, engage the problems directly, and find collective solutions?

Brian Teare is the author of eight chapbooks and seven books of poetry, including, Doomstead Days, which won the Four Quartets Prize. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including fellowships from Guggenheim, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Pew. He currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia. He’s also an editor and publisher and makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

At over 1300 words, this poem is much longer than the others we’ve featured in our Poets series, but it’s worth it.

Subscribe on Ghost

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Ghost, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Brian Teare

A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of seven critically acclaimed books. His most recent publications are a diptych of book-length ekphrastic projects exploring queer abstraction, chronic illness, and collage: the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and the fall 2023 publication of Poem Bitten by a Man, winner of the 2024 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eight years in Philadelphia, he’s now an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

Subscribe on Ghost

Doomstead Days

By Brian Teare

today’s gender is rain

it touches everything

with its little silver

epistemology

mottled like a brook trout

with a hundred spots

white as bark scars

on this slim trunk

thrust up from

one sidewalk square

the four square feet

of open ground

given a street tree

twiggy perimeter

continually clipped

by parking or car door

or passing trash truck

that snaps an actual

branch I find haunting

the little plot

its winged achenes

auto-rotate down to

it’s not that I don’t

like a wide sidewalk

or the 45 bus

that grinds right by

but if organisms

didn’t insist on

forms of resistance

they’d be dead

of anthropocentric

technomechanical

systems whose grids

restrict the living

through perpetual stress

that elicits intense

physical response

like an animal

panic hitting

the psoas with cramps

or root fungus sunk in

the maple’s allotment

of city property

as tolerably wide

as the migraine

that begins at the base

of my skull & pinches

with breadth calipers

my temples until

the feel of flay arrays

the dura’s surface

inside the bones inside

the head the healer holds

in her hands & says

the occiput is shut

flat & irks the nerves

that thread through its

unappeasable shunt

into the spine I see

a white light I keep

thinking about the way

long drought dries out

topsoil so deep beneath

its surface the first

hard rain wreaks flood

taking the good dirt

with it the way today’s

wet excess escapes

its four square feet

of exposed root

& rivers out

a flex of sediment

alluvial over

the civic cement

of the anthropocene

in currents a supple

rippled velvet dun

as Wissahickon creek

in fall’s brief season

of redd & spawn

when brook trout

in chill quick shallows

once dug into gravel

to let nested eggs

mix with milt

& turn pearls

translucent as raw

unpolished quartz

each white eyed ova

flawed by a black fleck

my eyes close over

at the height of migraine

fertile error waiting

with incipient tail

ready to propel it

deeper into nausea

until the healer halts

its hatching & calms

neuralgia between

the heels of her hands

pressing the occiput

back open into

the natural curve

the bones forget

the way the banks

of the Wissahickon

have forgotten rapids

rinsing schist shaded

by hemlock that kept

the brook trout cold

each patterned aspect

of habitat lost

first to dams & mills

& industry runoff

& plots of flax

Germantown planted

for paper & cloth

made with water’s power

& hauled out of

the precipitous gorge

up rough narrow roads

south to the city port

before adelgids

took the crucial dark

from under hemlocks

sun heating the rocky

creek down steep rills

to the lower Schuylkill

wide in its final miles

dammed at Fairmount

for two centuries

of coal silt & dredge

fabric dye & sewage

that gave rise to typhus

& refinery spills

that gave rise to fire

rinsed by this gender

that remembers

current’s circuit

anadromous shad

& striped bass

leaving the Atlantic

heading upriver

shedding saltwater

for fresh in runs

whose numbers turned

the green river silver

if color counts as

epistemology

spring sun on the backs

of a thousand shad

is a form of knowing

local to another

century & the duller

color of ours

is the way the word

gender remembers

it once meant to fuck

beget or give birth

sibling to generate

& engender all

fertile at the root

& continuous

as falling water

molecules smoothing

the sparkling gnarl

of Wissahickon schist

until its surface

mirrors their force

the fuel element

& fundament alike

derive thriving from

being at its biggest

when it’s kinetic

energy headed

toward intensity

everything’s body

connected by this

totally elastic

materiality

I feel as ecstatic

wide dilation

when the shut skull

gives up resistance

to the healer’s hands

& the occiput

opens its bones

my mind’s eye goes

okay I’m awake now

rowdy with trout

psoas relaxed

my body’s a conduit

it roars with water

passing from past

to present through

pipes & riparian

ecotones alike

all of my fluids

pollutants cycling

back into my own

watershed toxins

& heavy metals

bonded to blood

stored in liver & fat

C8 glyphosate

mercury & lead

it’s awkward okay

I keep thinking about

the man who asks me

to visit his doomstead

which seems kinky

for a first date

what’s the safeword

for men with genders

built for the world’s end

men with weaponized

genders hoarding solar

power & canned goods

bottled water genders

tending small vegetable

gardens out back

behind the chickens

concrete genders sealed

in lead their doors

secured from inside

with thick steel bars

fringe libertarian

endtimes genders

hetero girlie

camo gun calendars

apocalyptic tits

pinned on brick walls

by lone bunks

so the men can cross out

each day once

civil society

ends with a pathetic

snivel like please help

doomstead men live

doomstead days already

sealed in extreme fiction

as if there were

ever a way to stay

safely self-contained

by which I mean

the anthropocene

is its own gender

biospheric in scale

its persistent flux

from fossil record

to Antarctic ice core

so uncontainable

we all exhibit it

with a local sense

of personal chosen

expression strategic

or contingent

like fertility

medicalized tracked

managed or casual

happy fucking

without a condom

risky given the odds

leveraged against us

& the blameless

microbes seeking

homes in our nooks

& tubes so I don’t

visit his doomstead

a psychic structure

I feel in my head

as blocked thought

I watch play out

in the Schuylkill

where it pools wide

shallow with silt

above Fairmount dam

I stand on the bank

& know I’m not

supposed to posit

an analogy

between the river

& my body but

courtesy of this dam

the city siphons

its water into me

another human

intervention

diverting its path

each of my cells

a little prison

the river sits in

so we’re related

on a molecular

level so intimate

I think I can say

it wants speed

& movement free

enough to jump

the strained relation

to human needs

it serves without relief

without the hands

that hold my bones

& tend my fascia

that remember

a different posture

without blockage

or pain a model

for undoing harm

done by capital

empowered to frack

during record drought

millions of gallons

of toxic wastewater

injected into earth

or kept in open ponds

prone & porous

in western counties

where river otters

have rebounded after

last being spotted

in the Allegheny

in 1899

otters are raucous

& chirp chitter

chuckle & grumble

when wrestling together

or sliding on ice

playful biophony

rivers have missed

for a whole century

like brook trout rooting

in loose cool gravel

or the plash of insects

fallen from hemlocks

the intact eastern

riverine biome

one serious mess

of sound enmeshed

in sound enmeshed

in biotic patterns

as heavy as traffic

when the weekend

weather is nice

& I ride the early

27 bus

to the Wissahickon

it’s not that I don’t like

the city it’s just if

biodiversity

is a measure of health

a city is

by definition sick

with people & built

structures crowding

out other lives

though I love signs

species persist

this sidewalk moss

probably bryum

argentum native

to guano-covered

seabird rookeries

this fertile gingko

stinking up the street

with stone fruits

crushed underfoot

this nameless fern

in a downpipe drain

so modest in scale

like the simple songs

of house sparrows

everywhere though

this chubby one

is hustling a fallen

everything bagel

of seeds & crumbs

& it’s not that I don’t

like people either

our sociality

genitals & smells

interesting diction

surprising privacies

revealed at parties

bars & in bedrooms

our genders in acts

various & wet

as thought product

of dissolved salts

washing our brains

in rich cognition

that falters without

water which can’t be

taken by the head

in the hands & held

in the hopes of healing

its body is too vast

its mind boundless

by definition

the world is awake

be careful my dears

it is the gender

that remembers

everything

Copyright Credit: Brian Teare, "Doomstead Days" from Doomstead Days. Copyright © 2019 by Brian Teare. Reprinted by permission of Nightboat Books.

Subscribe on Ghost

Credits

This episode was researched by Elena Cebulash and edited by Sarah Westrich and Mo Armstrong. Music is by Daniel Rodriguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.