WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.070 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem I wrote for you. 00:00:02.070 --> 00:00:05.870 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.870 --> 00:00:10.590 align:middle line:84% It's called Doomstead Days, and I'm not 00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:13.840 align:middle line:84% going to tell you ahead of time what a doomstead is, 00:00:13.840 --> 00:00:15.410 align:middle line:90% if you don't know already. 00:00:15.410 --> 00:00:19.340 align:middle line:84% It's a fascinating aspect of our contemporary culture, 00:00:19.340 --> 00:00:25.560 align:middle line:84% and I'm also not-- this is a poem that includes everything 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:32.040 align:middle line:84% from my life and from the bioregion around Philadelphia. 00:00:32.040 --> 00:00:34.870 align:middle line:84% I guess, just what I'll say a little bit of, 00:00:34.870 --> 00:00:36.940 align:middle line:84% and you lived in Germantown, so you 00:00:36.940 --> 00:00:43.500 align:middle line:84% know there's a really wonderful part of Fairmount Park called 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:48.980 align:middle line:84% the Wissahickon which is a really beautiful gorge 00:00:48.980 --> 00:00:50.050 align:middle line:90% and creek. 00:00:50.050 --> 00:00:54.980 align:middle line:84% And it is a tributary of the Schuylkill 00:00:54.980 --> 00:00:58.188 align:middle line:84% which is also what sort of rounds most of Philly 00:00:58.188 --> 00:00:59.730 align:middle line:84% and then goes into the Delaware which 00:00:59.730 --> 00:01:04.080 align:middle line:84% sort of is on the other side of Philly 00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:05.860 align:middle line:84% and they kind of converge in the south. 00:01:05.860 --> 00:01:11.290 align:middle line:84% So it's a watershed poem, but there's a lot of other stuff. 00:01:11.290 --> 00:01:16.120 align:middle line:84% And just factoid our state fish in Pennsylvania as the brook 00:01:16.120 --> 00:01:17.220 align:middle line:90% trout. 00:01:17.220 --> 00:01:21.670 align:middle line:84% Our state tree, the hemlock, eastern hemlock 00:01:21.670 --> 00:01:25.950 align:middle line:84% which as you know, is under attack by the woolly adelgid. 00:01:25.950 --> 00:01:30.080 align:middle line:84% So we've lost a great deal of our state tree. 00:01:30.080 --> 00:01:34.810 align:middle line:84% Brook trout, endangered, because you need 00:01:34.810 --> 00:01:38.620 align:middle line:84% hemlocks to shade the creeks where they breed 00:01:38.620 --> 00:01:40.530 align:middle line:90% to keep the water cold enough. 00:01:40.530 --> 00:01:44.730 align:middle line:84% And you also need clean, non-silty, no coal silt, 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:48.610 align:middle line:84% for instance, no mining effluent in the water. 00:01:48.610 --> 00:01:52.000 align:middle line:84% We have a hard time with that in Pennsylvania. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:54.040 align:middle line:90% So it was funny. 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:56.660 align:middle line:84% I was doing all this research into-- this is like my, 00:01:56.660 --> 00:02:00.250 align:middle line:84% 'I live in Pennsylvania now, I can just admit it' poem. 00:02:00.250 --> 00:02:03.970 align:middle line:84% And as I did all this research, I was like, 00:02:03.970 --> 00:02:07.160 align:middle line:84% every single state, anything, it's like the worst thing 00:02:07.160 --> 00:02:09.600 align:middle line:84% to get elected to any state anything 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:12.900 align:middle line:84% in Pennsylvania, because you will be endangered immediately. 00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:15.530 align:middle line:84% The ruffed grouse, there's no habitat left. 00:02:15.530 --> 00:02:20.790 align:middle line:84% It's like sad, our sad, sad, fucked up state. 00:02:20.790 --> 00:02:23.340 align:middle line:90% 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:28.370 align:middle line:84% But pretty representative of the Anthropocene, I have to say. 00:02:28.370 --> 00:02:29.600 align:middle line:90% It was a good wake up call. 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:31.700 align:middle line:90% So anyways, Doomstead Days. 00:02:31.700 --> 00:02:34.680 align:middle line:84% You'll notice it's a very different poem which 00:02:34.680 --> 00:02:37.610 align:middle line:90% makes me happy. 00:02:37.610 --> 00:02:40.610 align:middle line:90% Doomstead Days. 00:02:40.610 --> 00:02:42.490 align:middle line:90% Today's gender is rain. 00:02:42.490 --> 00:02:47.100 align:middle line:84% It touches everything with its little silver epistemology, 00:02:47.100 --> 00:02:50.270 align:middle line:84% modeled like a brook trout, with 100 spots 00:02:50.270 --> 00:02:53.430 align:middle line:84% wide as bark scars on this slim trunk, 00:02:53.430 --> 00:02:56.310 align:middle line:84% thrust up from one sidewalk square. 00:02:56.310 --> 00:02:58.840 align:middle line:84% The four square feet of open ground 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:03.050 align:middle line:84% given a straight tree twiggy perimeter continually clipped 00:03:03.050 --> 00:03:06.560 align:middle line:84% by parking or car door or passing trash truck 00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:08.690 align:middle line:90% that snaps an actual branch. 00:03:08.690 --> 00:03:11.960 align:middle line:84% I find haunting the little plot, its winged 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:14.870 align:middle line:90% achenes auto rotate down to. 00:03:14.870 --> 00:03:18.760 align:middle line:84% It's not that I don't like a wide sidewalk or the 45 00:03:18.760 --> 00:03:21.020 align:middle line:90% bus that grinds right by. 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:25.100 align:middle line:84% But if organisms didn't insist on forms of resistance, 00:03:25.100 --> 00:03:27.760 align:middle line:84% they'd be dead of anthropocentric 00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:31.780 align:middle line:84% technomechanical systems whose grids restrict the living, 00:03:31.780 --> 00:03:34.070 align:middle line:84% through perpetual stress that elicits 00:03:34.070 --> 00:03:36.080 align:middle line:90% intense physical response. 00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:40.850 align:middle line:84% Like panic hitting the psoas with cramps, or root fungus 00:03:40.850 --> 00:03:44.160 align:middle line:84% sunken in maples allotment of city property. 00:03:44.160 --> 00:03:47.030 align:middle line:84% As tolerably wide as the migraine that 00:03:47.030 --> 00:03:50.720 align:middle line:84% begins at the base of my skull and pinches with breadth 00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:53.790 align:middle line:84% calipers my temples, until the feel of flay 00:03:53.790 --> 00:03:55.930 align:middle line:90% arrays the dura's surface. 00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:58.060 align:middle line:84% Inside the bones, inside the head, 00:03:58.060 --> 00:04:00.490 align:middle line:84% the healer holds in her hands and says 00:04:00.490 --> 00:04:03.800 align:middle line:84% the occiput is shut, flat, and irks 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:07.420 align:middle line:84% the nerves that thread through its unappeasable shunt 00:04:07.420 --> 00:04:08.530 align:middle line:90% into the spine. 00:04:08.530 --> 00:04:10.440 align:middle line:90% I see a white light. 00:04:10.440 --> 00:04:15.070 align:middle line:84% I keep thinking about the way long drought dries out topsoil 00:04:15.070 --> 00:04:18.450 align:middle line:84% so deep beneath its surface, the first hard rain 00:04:18.450 --> 00:04:21.220 align:middle line:84% wreaks flood, taking the good dirt with it. 00:04:21.220 --> 00:04:25.770 align:middle line:84% The way today's wet excess escapes its four square feet 00:04:25.770 --> 00:04:29.940 align:middle line:84% of the exposed root and rivers out, a flex of sediment 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:34.090 align:middle line:84% alluvial over the civic cement of the Anthropocene 00:04:34.090 --> 00:04:34.800 align:middle line:90% in currents. 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:38.730 align:middle line:84% A supple, rippled, velvet dun as Wissahickon Creek 00:04:38.730 --> 00:04:42.150 align:middle line:84% in fall's brief season of red and spawn. 00:04:42.150 --> 00:04:45.530 align:middle line:84% When brook trout in chill quick shallows 00:04:45.530 --> 00:04:48.600 align:middle line:84% once dug into gravel to let nested eggs 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:51.030 align:middle line:90% mix with milt and turn pearls. 00:04:51.030 --> 00:04:55.870 align:middle line:84% Translucent as raw, unpolished quartz, each white-eyed ova 00:04:55.870 --> 00:04:57.990 align:middle line:90% flawed by a black fleck. 00:04:57.990 --> 00:05:01.430 align:middle line:84% My eyes close over at the height of migraine. 00:05:01.430 --> 00:05:04.880 align:middle line:84% Fertile error waiting with incipient tail, 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:07.720 align:middle line:84% ready to propel it deeper into nausea. 00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:12.210 align:middle line:84% Until the healer halts its hatching and calms neuralgia 00:05:12.210 --> 00:05:16.830 align:middle line:84% between the heels of her hands, pressing the occiput back open 00:05:16.830 --> 00:05:20.200 align:middle line:84% into the natural curve the bones forget. 00:05:20.200 --> 00:05:22.500 align:middle line:84% The way the banks of the Wissahickon 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:26.700 align:middle line:84% have forgotten rapids rinsing schist shaded by hemlock 00:05:26.700 --> 00:05:28.690 align:middle line:90% that kept the brook trout cold. 00:05:28.690 --> 00:05:32.270 align:middle line:84% Each patterned aspect of habitat lost first 00:05:32.270 --> 00:05:36.400 align:middle line:84% to dams and mills and industry runoff and plots of flax. 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:40.660 align:middle line:84% Germantown planted for paper and cloth made with water's power 00:05:40.660 --> 00:05:43.270 align:middle line:84% and hauled out of the precipitous gorge 00:05:43.270 --> 00:05:46.780 align:middle line:84% up rough narrow roads south to the city port. 00:05:46.780 --> 00:05:49.340 align:middle line:84% Before adelgids took the crucial dark 00:05:49.340 --> 00:05:53.020 align:middle line:84% from under hemlocks sun heating the rocky creek down 00:05:53.020 --> 00:05:55.600 align:middle line:84% steep rills to the lower Schuylkill. 00:05:55.600 --> 00:05:58.810 align:middle line:84% Wide in its final miles dammed at Fairmount 00:05:58.810 --> 00:06:02.770 align:middle line:84% for two centuries of coal silt and dredge, fabric dying 00:06:02.770 --> 00:06:05.420 align:middle line:84% and sewage, that gave rise to typhus 00:06:05.420 --> 00:06:08.590 align:middle line:84% and refinery spills that gave rise to fire. 00:06:08.590 --> 00:06:12.690 align:middle line:84% Rinsed by this gender that remembers current's circuit 00:06:12.690 --> 00:06:16.590 align:middle line:84% anadromous shad and striped bass leaving the Atlantic, 00:06:16.590 --> 00:06:18.960 align:middle line:84% heading up river, shedding salt water 00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:23.750 align:middle line:84% for fresh in runs whose numbers turned the Green River silver. 00:06:23.750 --> 00:06:27.320 align:middle line:84% If color counts as epistemology, spring sun 00:06:27.320 --> 00:06:31.200 align:middle line:84% on the backs of 1,000 shad is a form of knowing. 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:35.440 align:middle line:84% Local to another century and the duller color of ours 00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:38.350 align:middle line:84% is the way the word gender remembers. 00:06:38.350 --> 00:06:43.310 align:middle line:84% It once meant to fuck, beget, or give birth, sibling, 00:06:43.310 --> 00:06:45.290 align:middle line:90% to generate, and engender. 00:06:45.290 --> 00:06:50.280 align:middle line:84% All fertile at the root and continuous as falling water, 00:06:50.280 --> 00:06:54.820 align:middle line:84% molecules smoothing the sparkling gnarl of Wissahickon 00:06:54.820 --> 00:06:58.470 align:middle line:84% schist until its surface mirrors their force. 00:06:58.470 --> 00:07:03.370 align:middle line:84% The fuel element and fundament alike derive thriving from, 00:07:03.370 --> 00:07:07.880 align:middle line:84% being at its biggest, when its kinetic energy headed 00:07:07.880 --> 00:07:09.790 align:middle line:90% toward intensity. 00:07:09.790 --> 00:07:14.760 align:middle line:84% Everything's body connected by this totally elastic 00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:16.220 align:middle line:90% materiality. 00:07:16.220 --> 00:07:20.670 align:middle line:84% I feel as ecstatic, wide dilation, when the shut skull 00:07:20.670 --> 00:07:23.810 align:middle line:84% gives up resistance to the healer's hands, 00:07:23.810 --> 00:07:26.310 align:middle line:90% and the occiput opens its bones. 00:07:26.310 --> 00:07:31.850 align:middle line:84% My mind's eye goes, OK, I'm awake now, rowdy with trout, 00:07:31.850 --> 00:07:33.020 align:middle line:90% psoas relaxed. 00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:34.390 align:middle line:90% My body's a conduit. 00:07:34.390 --> 00:07:38.410 align:middle line:84% It roars with water, passing from past to present through. 00:07:38.410 --> 00:07:41.040 align:middle line:84% Pipes and riparian ecotones like, 00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:43.980 align:middle line:84% all of my fluids pollutants cycling back 00:07:43.980 --> 00:07:45.460 align:middle line:90% into my own watershed. 00:07:45.460 --> 00:07:48.360 align:middle line:84% Toxins and heavy metals bonded to blood, 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:53.370 align:middle line:84% stored in liver and fat, C8 glyphosate, mercury, and lead. 00:07:53.370 --> 00:07:54.190 align:middle line:90% It's awkward. 00:07:54.190 --> 00:07:54.990 align:middle line:90% OK? 00:07:54.990 --> 00:07:57.030 align:middle line:84% I keep thinking about the man who 00:07:57.030 --> 00:08:00.880 align:middle line:84% asked me to visit his doomstead, which seems kinky 00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:02.220 align:middle line:90% for a first date. 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:05.110 align:middle line:84% What's the safe word for men with genders 00:08:05.110 --> 00:08:06.960 align:middle line:90% built for the worlds end? 00:08:06.960 --> 00:08:11.190 align:middle line:84% Men with weaponized genders, hoarding solar power 00:08:11.190 --> 00:08:13.050 align:middle line:90% and canned goods, bottled water. 00:08:13.050 --> 00:08:16.560 align:middle line:84% Genders tending small vegetable gardens out back, 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:17.780 align:middle line:90% behind the chickens. 00:08:17.780 --> 00:08:22.450 align:middle line:84% Concrete genders sealed in lead, their doors secured from inside 00:08:22.450 --> 00:08:24.040 align:middle line:90% with thick steel bars. 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:28.670 align:middle line:84% Fringe libertarian end times genders, hetero, girly, camo, 00:08:28.670 --> 00:08:32.830 align:middle line:84% gun calendars, apocalyptic tits pinned on brick walls, 00:08:32.830 --> 00:08:37.230 align:middle line:84% by a lone bunk, so the men can cross out each day once. 00:08:37.230 --> 00:08:40.330 align:middle line:84% Civil society ends with a pathetic snivel 00:08:40.330 --> 00:08:41.830 align:middle line:90% like, please help. 00:08:41.830 --> 00:08:45.940 align:middle line:84% Doomstead men live doomstead days already sealed 00:08:45.940 --> 00:08:47.600 align:middle line:90% in extreme fiction. 00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:52.590 align:middle line:84% As if there were ever a way to stay safely self-contained, 00:08:52.590 --> 00:08:57.530 align:middle line:84% by which I mean the Anthropocene is its own gender biospheric 00:08:57.530 --> 00:08:58.310 align:middle line:90% in scale. 00:08:58.310 --> 00:09:02.690 align:middle line:84% Its persistent flux from fossil record to an arctic ice core, 00:09:02.690 --> 00:09:05.800 align:middle line:84% so uncontainable we all exhibit it 00:09:05.800 --> 00:09:09.540 align:middle line:84% with a local sense of personal chosen expression, 00:09:09.540 --> 00:09:11.680 align:middle line:90% strategic or contingent. 00:09:11.680 --> 00:09:14.190 align:middle line:84% Like fertility, medicalized, tracked, 00:09:14.190 --> 00:09:17.650 align:middle line:84% managed, or casual, happy fucking without a condom, 00:09:17.650 --> 00:09:20.700 align:middle line:84% risky given the odd, leverage against us, 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.240 align:middle line:84% and the blameless microbes seeking 00:09:23.240 --> 00:09:25.340 align:middle line:90% homes in our nooks and tubes. 00:09:25.340 --> 00:09:29.540 align:middle line:84% So I don't visit his doomstead, a psychic structure 00:09:29.540 --> 00:09:33.520 align:middle line:84% I feel in my head as blocked thought I watch play out 00:09:33.520 --> 00:09:36.500 align:middle line:84% in the Schuylkill where pools wide shallow 00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:38.680 align:middle line:90% with silt above Fairmount Dam. 00:09:38.680 --> 00:09:39.970 align:middle line:90% I stand on the bank. 00:09:39.970 --> 00:09:44.640 align:middle line:84% I know I'm not supposed to posit an analogy between the river 00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:48.250 align:middle line:84% and my body, but courtesy of this dam, the city 00:09:48.250 --> 00:09:50.570 align:middle line:90% siphons its water into me. 00:09:50.570 --> 00:09:53.740 align:middle line:84% So we're related on a molecular level, 00:09:53.740 --> 00:09:57.180 align:middle line:84% so intimate I think I can say it wants 00:09:57.180 --> 00:10:02.720 align:middle line:84% speed and movement, free enough to jump dumb impediment. 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:06.800 align:middle line:84% We ask water to hold itself in strained relation 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:09.110 align:middle line:90% to human needs without relief. 00:10:09.110 --> 00:10:13.000 align:middle line:84% Without the hands that hold my bones and tend my fascia 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:15.320 align:middle line:84% that remember a different posture 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:17.420 align:middle line:90% without blockage or pain. 00:10:17.420 --> 00:10:21.340 align:middle line:84% A model for undoing harm done by capital 00:10:21.340 --> 00:10:25.580 align:middle line:84% empowered to frack during record drought, awful for aquifers. 00:10:25.580 --> 00:10:29.570 align:middle line:84% Millions of gallons of toxic waste water injected into Earth 00:10:29.570 --> 00:10:34.500 align:middle line:84% or kept in open ponds, prone and porous in Western counties. 00:10:34.500 --> 00:10:37.890 align:middle line:84% Where river otters have rebounded after last being 00:10:37.890 --> 00:10:42.100 align:middle line:84% spotted in the Allegheny in 1899. 00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:45.440 align:middle line:84% Otters are raucous, and chirp, chitter, 00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:48.710 align:middle line:84% chuckle, and grumble when wrestling together or sliding 00:10:48.710 --> 00:10:49.580 align:middle line:90% on ice. 00:10:49.580 --> 00:10:53.820 align:middle line:84% Playful biophany rivers have missed for a whole century, 00:10:53.820 --> 00:10:57.860 align:middle line:84% like brook trout rooting in loose, cool gravel or the plash 00:10:57.860 --> 00:11:00.340 align:middle line:84% of insects falling from hemlocks. 00:11:00.340 --> 00:11:03.500 align:middle line:84% The intact eastern riverine biome, 00:11:03.500 --> 00:11:08.340 align:middle line:84% one serious mess of sound enmeshed in sound 00:11:08.340 --> 00:11:10.890 align:middle line:90% enmeshed in biotic patterns. 00:11:10.890 --> 00:11:15.030 align:middle line:84% As heavy as traffic when the weekend weather is nice, 00:11:15.030 --> 00:11:19.600 align:middle line:84% and I ride the early 27 bus to the Wissahickon. 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:22.250 align:middle line:84% It's not that I don't like the city. 00:11:22.250 --> 00:11:25.910 align:middle line:84% It's just if biodiversity is the measure of health, 00:11:25.910 --> 00:11:30.300 align:middle line:84% the city is by definition sick with people 00:11:30.300 --> 00:11:34.170 align:middle line:84% and built structures crowding out other lives. 00:11:34.170 --> 00:11:37.640 align:middle line:84% Though I love signs, species persist. 00:11:37.640 --> 00:11:41.260 align:middle line:84% This sidewalk moss, probably Bryum argentum, 00:11:41.260 --> 00:11:44.820 align:middle line:84% native to guano-covered seabird rookeries. 00:11:44.820 --> 00:11:47.690 align:middle line:84% This female ginko stinking up the street 00:11:47.690 --> 00:11:50.060 align:middle line:84% with stone fruits crushed underfoot. 00:11:50.060 --> 00:11:55.320 align:middle line:84% This nameless fern in a downpipe drain, so modest in scale, 00:11:55.320 --> 00:11:58.680 align:middle line:84% like the simple songs of house sparrows everywhere though. 00:11:58.680 --> 00:12:01.970 align:middle line:84% This chubby one is hustling a fallen everything 00:12:01.970 --> 00:12:04.740 align:middle line:90% bagel of seeds and crumbs. 00:12:04.740 --> 00:12:07.670 align:middle line:84% And it's not that I don't like people either, 00:12:07.670 --> 00:12:11.220 align:middle line:84% our sociality, genitals, and smells, 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:14.270 align:middle line:84% interesting diction, surprising privacies 00:12:14.270 --> 00:12:17.790 align:middle line:84% revealed at parties, bars, and in bedrooms. 00:12:17.790 --> 00:12:21.230 align:middle line:84% Our genders in acts various and wet, 00:12:21.230 --> 00:12:24.300 align:middle line:84% as thought product of dissolved salts, 00:12:24.300 --> 00:12:27.510 align:middle line:84% washing our brains in rich cognition 00:12:27.510 --> 00:12:30.540 align:middle line:84% that falters without water which can't 00:12:30.540 --> 00:12:34.980 align:middle line:84% be taken by the head in the hands and held in the hopes 00:12:34.980 --> 00:12:35.890 align:middle line:90% of healing. 00:12:35.890 --> 00:12:38.430 align:middle line:90% Its body is too vast. 00:12:38.430 --> 00:12:40.640 align:middle line:90% Its mind boundless. 00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:44.300 align:middle line:84% By definition, the world is awake. 00:12:44.300 --> 00:12:47.940 align:middle line:84% Be careful, my dears, it is the gender 00:12:47.940 --> 00:12:51.240 align:middle line:90% that remembers everything. 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:52.000 align:middle line:90%