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.