In the Third Sleep

by Elana Wolff

(after Kay Sage)

We were stationed, out of the picture,
in the frame.
We didn’t get a wider view,

a longer look
at fortunes—beyond the architectural

shards, the craft, the cracks,

the stasis.
There were no speaking
lines in the Third, no tableau vivant.

The verdant meadow
flecked with flowers, burbling
stream and people

didn’t make the cut: the smell of it—
mephitic—
tailed us to waking.

In the Third Sleep

by Nash Lott

(in response to Kay Sage’s painting “In The Third Sleep,” 1944)

forgive my inattention.

span the void

to reach me, I’m out
of SNRIs
they’re saying something
about sheets
about sails
I’m on some rail

tracking down sleep

dope, I mean—weed-
s grow on synapses, clutter
the yard, front
-al cortex, cannabis
over chaos

night seconds creep

you’ve caught me
unwashed, pans
around my ankles
after I was
cooked,
before I am
overdone

In The Third Sleep

by Jonathan Bennett

(after Kay Sage)

A red kite makes
off with a sausage roll 

last month in Oxfordshire

And I for one am
having none of it unless

all hell breaks free and it soars

From muffins to
mountain tops and back
again we are delighted to meet

Our maker in flight
our paths we trust and follow
our pride no grief so it lands fairly

Or squarely behind
a baby on board caution
stickers to tribal conventions

What if the tailgater
dipped backed in for ketchup
divebombed for crisp snow apples

Made a whole shebang
out of it blasted smithereens
God least then we’d know for sure

In the Third Sleep, one two three

by Jonathan Bessette 

(a conversation with Kay Sage on the other side 

of her painting “In the Third Sleep” in 1944)

In the Third Sleep

by Meghan Kemp-Gee

(after Kay Sage)

 

I bless you with a future morning,

an airship. We are dirigible.

Our work is throat-work:

wood, wind in the sails.

Our work is, we over-

look the plain. Treeless,

ghost elephants and whalefalls.

Ghost hayfever, bless you. 

Riverbanks, disaster. 

Airsickness, woodwinds. 

Not our own survival,

the third sleep, folding

ropes. Trunks, folding

skyline, sun-baked ivory.

In the Third Sleep

by Canisia Lubrin

(following Kay Sage)

on january 8th, the dark, clear dark       government cut internet, cut response, cut
protests       single shadow blackouts, this northeasternmost of cities—rare brutal,
rare dull      test your thousands, demonstrate and be slain          ghost rope to hang
pictures, fill in the happened—with the smog of shocking peace.

& only stories of the living wait

report the five labourers, present for the massacre, video evidence, machine-given
illustrations—their floors of shocking peace        speak, pediatrician, of your
thirty dead under eighteen       speak, eight-year-old girl—the nowhere of shocking
peace             speak, doctor, “this no-sense of humanity”             speak,
memoryless, the three nights               “the streets of a hometown, a killing field”

remember, demonstrator—this sleepless shade of shocking peace.

& only stories of the living wait

explain this world rallying the blinded men. the roads, the hope of many       that
big-fisted help would be here      “but just death now—so many dead”—throughout
the night of shocking peace          what nature roots in        the country to be
burnished, to hold no signs of the living                      in the mirror          hatched
from internet posts he wrote—the armada reasons               false sands in that clear
dark so, president, you are fissile, for far worse will spread again your sleep.

& only stories of the living wait

in the possible world, government levied to forced forgetting—the reign of shocking
peace             come now yourself, my friends, but reclaim these (un)loved ones from
fake death certificates—their static sails of shocking peace                          all evidence
of the killing is gone           with the cook, the last to speak               “see the sterile
streets, the lives in the hospitals”—the graveyards of shocking peace.

In the Third Sleep

by Lisa Richter 

(after Kay Sage)

 

 

the world was the same way we left it 

the desert’s fissures cracked open 

our way of knowing how to speak

our names in multiple extinct languages

the birds surveyed the remaining strips 

of forest and flew back into abstraction

leaving behind a wet smear of orange

that faded over time and became a sunset

the wind followed our limbs and turned

them into the masts of grounded ships 

wove our hair into sails that creased

beneath the pressure to catch everything

we had previously dismissed as ripples

in space-time where do we go now

that the sky has steamrolled our questions

what is the best shortcut to the nearest 

medusa garden whose baritone assurances 

of the horizon’s bloodless monochrome 

can we metabolize into creation myth 

why do our songs all sound like seabirds dying

In the Third Sleep

by Catherine Graham

(after Kay Sage)

 

Some say the invisible is mechanical.

What can’t see sees you.

 

In this landscape—shadows.

There must be a sun.

 

An aircraft labyrinth—

what looks like a track—

 

slides as in a dream.

Nothing inside spun canvas

 

has a heartbeat. And when

I anger to what’s missing

 

the white sails stiffen.

This is my self-portrait.

 

I exert what I am into air.

 

 

 

In the Third Sleep

by Kate Cayley

(after Kay Sage)

 

I did not remember the first sleep. 

Airlifted from the other place

where all sleep is collected and sorted 

into regulatory shapes. Cloth, paper.

 

In the third sleep, I needed to find the first,

approaching from the lower end, on hands

and knees. It was slow going because of the sand:

every speck had to be collected from my skin

or I would damage the surface as I climbed.

 

Like so much else, it only looks impermeable. 

 

I was naked. The sand was very hot. A body

has so many folds, so much secretion. Finally

I was able to begin crawling. 

The grey was less hot, but not cool

and I hoped for wind, at the further height

 

if I could make it past the sails, obviously

placed to trick me into thinking I was finished.

 

That first sleep was concealed in the paper shapes,

 

difficult to unfold. The words are so small.

 

The paper granulates into sand as you read.

 

When you’ve finished reading you’ll know,

whether or not you want to. 

In the Third Sleep

by Ellen Chang-Richardson

(for and after Kay Sage, 1898–1963)

 

 

I drape apocalypse in my name

shoot myself through the heart

mute turmoil in sleep abandon

 

dream archive	travelling loops
symbiote	symbiotic
travelling loops	dream archive
rail lines	without end
travelling loops	dream archive
farm lands	barren
travelling loops	dream archive
door ways	ajar
travelling loops	dream archive
clasping	abandon
travelling loops	dream archive
grass lands	without end
travelling loops	dream archive
concrete	depressions
travelling loops	dream archive
no difference	no difference
travelling archive	dream loops
symbiont	symbiont
travelling	travelling
travelling	travelling
travelling	travelling

 

we drape apocalypse in our name

shoot ourself through the heart

mute turmoil in sleek abandon                          :|

 

 

In the Third Sleep, We Will Converge. After the Next Revolution, We Will Stop Screaming.

by Jade Wallace  

(for Kay Sage, who went quiet on January 8, 1963)

 

Like echoes we are 

 

 

alone in the desert.  

 

 

Oracles look at our landscape

 

 

and see how we will die.  

 

You in your pillbox, 

 

curtains drawn;

me in mine, 

 

watching the radio antenna 

shudder your voice 

over barren air.

 

Copper circuits our days,

a corn snake vibrating 

between us. Our days are 

dunes we have been thrust upon.

 

Ozymandias looms, Colossus leers, 

and like ants we are invisible 

in shadow, waiting for night 

to lower the shades 

of cypress. 

 

Nothing lasts, you say;

Nothing lasts, I agree.  

We watch for birds rising 

unruly against the sky—

the infinitesimal feather 

that will break our horizon.

In the Third Sleep (Beep Beep)

by Mark Laliberte 

(after Kay Sage)

(i) 

Horizon for sail: an anchor! 

Y-axis roared in like an engine; 

fair swan whose ribbon has fallen, 

root-routed along the factory track. 

(ii) 

Oar or orgasm, unmoored! 

Erection, the insertive partner; 

both miracle and curdled monster, 

a cure for a lump in the throat. 

(iii) 

Behold the inquisitor’s soft anvil! 

Icy penitentes pray to fallen cones, 

shame dunce-running their ritual; 

a search for acme without rancor.

In the Third Sleep; or, The Hermit Sage Relates the Quest as Told Him at His Lodge Near the Spring in the Forest by Sir Kay the Seneschal Returning Gaunt and Wounded Toward Camelot

by A. F. Moritz 

(after Kay Sage)

It was a long trudge

the straight way perfectly

straight with various dreamily

winding traces

streaking that flat pounded

path of a material

unknown to science he said

snaky threads or veins or rills

as if of fresh blood

running before them

but it couldn’t be fresh

it lay there so long

no matter how far

they trudged no source

no wounded side

of any animal 

appeared there were

no animals no matter

how long they trudged 

if it was blood it had

to have dried up

long ago they could

have touched tasted

if the maroon on their finger

whorls was sticky like

menses or dry as the old

saying says as dust but they

refrained they were

afraid

         though it was in fact 

a long trudge they

took on the straight

way there wasn’t much

there they ever came to no 

coverts giants caves chapels and it’s

over now yet somehow

remembering it they remember

they don’t remember it they

never made it it’s

the it’s yet to come

it will still happen to them some

day they saw then but now 

they were going to 

rest after it relieved having

survived were going to

pant silently so they slept and

waked with me here maybe

three times and then

passed on they have

come through as the 

poet said he told me and

told me

            there were

sheets or sails there something

at least collapsed clouds

that fell and smothered

the garden umbrellas a sea

breeze suddenly folded

and their daiquiris are

inside there unreachable

the nonexistent intestines

of a school child’s 

costume ghost we

truly did survive it though

he said we yet might not but

never fear it feels beside

this well that all will be

well and all will be well and it was

beautiful at least thank

goodness for that beautiful truly

there in the

unmoving wind 

and light and dry so

at least it proved

the real

existence

of the three universals

Thomas mentions and since

we have to agree on that much 

the fourth is

also proven 

unity

        but we saw

nothing

In the Third Sleep

Beatriz Hausner

(after Kay Sage) 

                                              

In my dream I see myself wandering 

inside the third sleep, its soft surfaces

are a skin covering the still body of night

illuminated by the moon, now full and bright

behind the curtains that conceal it. 

 

Your ghost approaches, its presence visible

to me only, standing behind the rigid sails

of the enormous nave now stranded in the Atacama

desert. "The stillness is about to brake,” 

I hear a voice say. I realize then that

I am not alone. I walk into the longest shadow

and feel myself in embrace with your absence.

 

“All is well,” I say, “go ahead, break the spell,

for I have accepted your nonattendance.”

 

As I turn my gaze towards the horizon, I feel

a strong gale pushing the entirety of the space 

forward, away from stasis, into motion and light.

 

February 8, 2026, in San Andrés Huayapan, Oaxaca.

 

In the Third Sleep

Lillian Nećakov 

(after Kay Sage)

you asked me what I saw
fairy fingers wing-lifted out of the filament of mycelial dreaming
an eternal unheard murmuring from the root brain
witch butter
middle memory, pixie, wild mother, placenta
animal, foxfire, spirit
hexenringe, devil penis
Alonkok – mushroom mother of all things
stillborn sky
aisling
crematorium
crow bone
dog bone
some bizarre genius
divination
the ever shifting nowness
shame.

In the Third Sleep

Alexander Hollenberg

(after Kay Sage)

 

I have asked the nation to return to me

my mother’s handkerchief 

but it has built me an aircraft carrier. 

 

You should not write poems

about your mother’s handkerchief

says the nation—take this aircraft carrier

 

instead. It is smooth and grey and clean

and one day you’ll feel nostalgic

for engine oil in your nostrils.

 

It is useless to think of handkerchiefs, 

says the nation, useless to think

of mothers with dress pockets

 

full of soft, phlegmy fabric. As if what?

As if waiting to be of use is enough? 

There is no such thing as enough.

 

On that we can agree. Not enough

ocean, not enough sky, not enough

ways to write about a war.

 

I have asked the nation for an aircraft carrier

to bring me my mother’s handkerchief.

There is no other reason for aircraft carriers.

 

 

In the Third Sleep

Jacob McArthur Mooney

(after Kay Sage)

You thought that I had asked to die,

but what I asked was to be released

from the future. Its trudge and aphorisms.

 

You asked: how will we live after civilization? 

I admitted: civilization was all that I was here for. 

Where else are we? Featureless landscapes 

like a storyboard for dreams. The interior life 

that we wanted is astride us. Come closer.

Let me inhale what you didn’t need to keep.

 

Initial sleep, life before life, then an interrupted 

sleep called Nights, and then the third: 

that one long feeling, like

being cold-launched through time, 

a cartoon from a cannon. Wind in my face, 

all that spotless gravity, 

so handsome and stupid and free.

In the Third Sleep

Tolu Oloruntoba

(after Kay Sage)

 

association shuffles its sand nodes

even farther afield.

 

There’s a mirage on the horizon, 

or a rumour of smoke 

 

from a lenticular dune perimeter 

concentrating the oblique sun.

 

***

 

Exposition’s hand can feel heavy 

on the chest in slumber, 

 

heavy as bomb-carrier-wide boardwalks 

in sharp inclension to nowhere,

 

as you breach the surface

of a face-wet dream

 

to a premonition, a theory of involution 

in which: if there can be no masts 

 

on the non-ship, there must be sundials of

sailcloth reading 3:17 post meridiem,

 

or Dacron-ear prophecies breaking containment, 

unfurling on the croft above the seed vault.

 

 

***

 

The Lost Ship of the Desert is a legend 

of the ship that is where it should not.

 

Juan de Iturbe’s galleon, or the Bom Jesus,

or Clive Cussler’s Texas. Flying Dutchmen, 

 

and spelunking zeppelins. Carrying gold, 

or else death. Our landed whales wear

 

Bauhaus barnacles, and fiberop bling. 

You are wanting, found

 

by meteoric satellites, terrible like

the thousand eyes of chitons, arrivant.

In the Third Sleep

Gary Barwin

(after Kay Sage)

I was a handkerchief in my first sleep. The wind a directionless nose. Snotty anxiety? It is so quiet here.

 

In my second sleep, I was a broken sail, origami houses receding into the plaintive distance, battleship grey. 

 

I do not remember if I had a face or a body. I was cut by shadows. The earth is shards, my bones shrouded in unexpected hope. 

 

The third sleep is all existential horizon. No echoes. No death. 

 

Smooth rope replaces love in a cloudless world.