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.