Do Not Disturb
writings on insomnia
“The Dream Night, the essence of night, does not let us sleep.
In the night no refuge is to be found in sleep.”
- Maurice Blanchot, “Sleep, Night” The Space of Literature
CONTENTS
Introduction
S. SUMAN & F. KURTER
confession - black page
SUNNY ZHENG-HERB
If
ALICIA TEBEAU-SHERRY
Nothing is Happening
Tossing and Turning
The Night Storm
LUCKY STIFF
the house alive
wishbone poem
woodpecker
RAPHAEL KRASNOW
I try not to masturbate while I’m single
I’d like to hate myself in the morning
just as phony as it can be
REYHAN JONES
1,001
STACY SEILER
Forms in the Half Light
FERNANDO ZELAYA
Reflections on dancing partly written at the Lightning Field on September 22, 2024
LU GILLESPIE
Shadows from the Moonlight
Every Time I Faint
HALLIE LEDERER
Sonnet for Winter
Steezy Breezy
Claire de Lune
Contributors
Introduction
Lying in the dark - sleep eludes - again. Night after night after night our displaced
bodies and minds wander in a perpetual limbo - between dreaming and
wakefulness - between night and day - between existence and death.
“How did you sleep?” This seemingly innocent question is fraught with
expectations, accusations and failure of all kinds.
“But who can sleep with the broken state of the world today?”, you say. Not many
of us, it seems. What if, we wondered, we welcomed the nightly specter of
restlessness into our beds, resisting the impulse to reject it, as sleep has rejected
us?
If so many of us are awake at night, where do the contested spaces of
insomnia take us? What and where are the possibilities within fragmented
thinking and the impossibility of sleep for the pursuit of more than a singular desire
to sleep? Curious, we put out a call for texts that take Insomnia as a source,
inspiration, obsession, or flirtation.
Lying in the dark - sleep eludes - again. Night after night after night our displaced
bodies and minds wander in a perpetual limbo - between dreaming and
wakefulness - between night and day - between existence and death.
“How did you sleep?” This seemingly innocent question is fraught with
expectations, accusations and failure of all kinds.
“But who can sleep with the broken state of the world today?”, you say. Not many
of us, it seems. What if, we wondered, we welcomed the nightly specter of
restlessness into our beds, resisting the impulse to reject it, as sleep has rejected
us?
If so many of us are awake at night, where do the contested spaces of
insomnia take us? What and where are the possibilities within fragmented
thinking and the impossibility of sleep for the pursuit of more than a singular desire
to sleep? Curious, we put out a call for texts that take Insomnia as a source,
inspiration, obsession, or flirtation.
Here in these suspended states of uncertainty, the Moon, a presence who taunts,
does loom large, as well as her attendants - Lust and Desire. Familiar places and
memories are now suspect, as are we. In the night, memory, forgetting, mourning,
and grief can run in parallel with longing and desire.
Here in these solitary spaces we fear the impossibility of accounting for another -
becoming empathetic - bound to another - only in our dreams. Sleep - its absence -
and yours - tugs, wondering: where, and how, can I join you?
If every waking is a loss, the writers in Do Not Disturb, use sleeplessness as a
creative state to defy our inability to forget. We invite you to turn on the light (you
aren’t sleeping after all) and perhaps find some measure of solidarity in these
texts.
Good night,
Snake House
S. SUMAN and F. KURTER
confession - black page
Once the night stretched across the earth.
The moon hung low over the water, nearly touching the surface.
I remember the woman who was here, lost her memory,
did not know who she was, where she had been, or what she had done.
The night stretches across the room.
The moon is low, nearly touching my face. Only it isn’t the moon,
it’s Morpheus disguised as a woman.
“What’s your relationship with insomnia?”, she asks.
“A close one.” I answer.
“Would you describe it as one between lovers? Enemies?” she whispers,
pinning me to the bed.
“Like a battlefield.” I whisper back.
SUNNY ZHENG-HERB
If
She likes to slink into my bedroom
The same question dripping from her lips
Hushed words coiling in my ear
Cutpurse fingers tracing my shoulder
What if?
What if?
What
if?
What if I can not sleep tonight?
If I entertain this question,
then I will not sleep.
I will not sleep if this question comes to me.
Even if I try to unthink this question,
it is already too late.
Sleep has departed from tonight, if not also from tomorrow.
If only I had not thought this question.
She waits for my capitulation
Gingerly perched at the corner of the bed
Head tilted, eyes gleaming
A languid curl on the edges of her mouth
What if?
What if?
What
if?
She is an eager companion
Rapacious for my clumsy hands
My wondering
stuttering
thoughts
My feeble
frustrated
tears
My choking rage
in the face of my own impotence.
I cannot unthink the question
What if I can not sleep tonight?
She springs up as I stumble to the bathroom
for the third time
Tiptoes across the hallway with me
Makes room for me on the flaking leather couch
Shoots me a knowing glance as I sit down.
Then come the words
I do not speak in the glare of day
Whispers that I have held at bay
Tightly wound threads of unresolved conversations
unresolved dissensions
unresolved postulations
unravel in the night
She holds me as I weave
Fragments and splinters and what was
Into tapestries that enjoin
What if?
What if?
What
if?
I find myself again
here in the night.
Come morning,
I will wince at the roar of my roommate’s nutribullet
and I will sink
Down into the dreams I should have dreamed
in the darkness
in the quiet
and I will float
Through each interaction and each obligation and each production
of the day
I will not return fully to myself
until I lay in bed at night.
And, once again, she slinks in
to ask
What if?
What if?
What
if?
ALICIA TEBEAU-SHERRY
Nothing is Happening to Me
To really feel nothing is when your eyes
begin to blur your body into a banana peeling
into bed half-alive. Sleep refuses to touch you,
so your vision puzzles someone painted like you,
kisses three different boys, & gawks at running
legs that have become bird-like. Fluted & stringed
music replays until it is dull. Life is far away.
Tossing & Turning: An Elegy
She laid down a wave’s
mouth, tiring over
her hips, , forehead,
she decided then this color
blue a yawn. The wave
a washing thing ,
, replaced
the sand & muck already
pocketed in her
with more of it . She a deposit,
a wave, &
again, at least the water was cool & salty.
The Night Storm
Above my head, thunder combs my hair. On pillows, wrapped like Earth’s layers,
my shoulders shift towards the window beside me. The rain is doing
what it does & the lightning has no interest in sticking around. My legs are friction &
I’m grinning because storms are a sour candy—you don’t have them
as often anymore, but an excuse to be still & then overtaken is too appealing to pass up.
I let my ears jump and fingers panic, still grinning from something.
LUCKY STIFF
the house alive
The radiator ticking is the
sound of an anxiety attack
waiting to happen.
The headlights on the ceiling
are harbingers,
flashlights of an angry mob.
I smell your mother’s body on the
sheets of the spare bedroom.
In the morning your shower screams,
its metal mouth wide and streaming.
I open mine to drown.
I know how it feels.
wishbone poem
Here’s what’s been going on:
the dog ate all my wishbones.
I don’t know, do I have
Any wishes left?
It’s 5 in the morning and the sun hasn’t quite shown
Let’s fuck to one of your playlists then pretend that we’re alone
woodpecker
I wake up in the attic and start reading about the atomic bomb.
You lived here once, also invited
Your lover, Chaos, to climb into your bed.
I roll over, gasping, at first light; see
the tree outside your window is full of holes.
RAPHAEL KRASNOW
I try not to masturbate while I’m single
it all felt so real
until after we came
when she asked to smoke a cigarette
I woke up then
the only tobacco she ever really enjoyed was on my breath
dreams that tempt you to suckle at their teat are of a malevolent coven
forged in the molasses of our brains
sticky with the good memories
they pull you in with vinyl webbing just enough to remember
only to shit you back out before joy sees sun
every few weeks she is back in my dreams
a neighborhood friend that stalks the streets of my nostalgia
by now she knows the terrain better than I do
when I’m awake I wonder
if maybe she’s dreaming of me
if maybe she never stopped dreaming of me
if maybe i can keep on sleeping
and bury my face into the coven
and feed on the honey
and we can grow old in vinyl
and stay sticky together forever like we planned
in the forgotten belly of a dream
too far away to ever wake
I’d like to hate myself in the morning
I considered calling out tomorrow
like that would solve a problem I had yet to identify
my reason for absence would read
could not put self down
I have become a 3 A.M. toddler
fussy
exhausted
unwilling to bend the knee to a dream
a 180 pound battering ram of loose leaf thoughts
stapled down, still
against the coarse palm of my walmart sheets
go to bed, you fool
you’re no good like this
the dishes in my sink mock me
what squalor is this?
I used to dream well
in neon and high fidelity
there was lust
adventure
but i suppose that was simply pirite
noxious potentiality
when i’ve run out of runway
when gravity finally defeats my eyelids
when that damn cat stops pawing at my doorknob
i’ll trundle away into something tidy
maybe a pocket in a smoking jacket i’ve never worn
and i’ll wake once more
stewing at the thought of my lost hours
barren and stupid
just as phony as it can be
underneath my rib cage
is a patch of sallow wisdom
sewn to the bone
jagged in its humor
and wistful for a decade before
I talk to the moon
she doesn’t listen
but the frosted edges of my nostrils
sing sweet carols in mimicry of dreams
a melody played in a penny arcade
grief sails onward
over a cardboard sea
REYHAN JONES
1,001
I dream of Insomnia as she kicks my ass
I am told one thousand and one more by an unreliable narrator
as I dream you live another day
STACY SEILER
“Forms in the Half Light”
It wasn't the sounds from the street
that kept me awake that night,
but instead, the ghostly reflections,
that moved across the walls.
Irregular bricks of light
on a single defined path.
Racing,
intense and brightly at first,
then slowly
fading
until their forms hovered
between an intangible presence and absence.
The kind of absence
that makes you wonder
how they existed at all.
So stark and furious in their birth,
only to become a never-ending procession
of ephemeral entities,
that leave no trace.
30 years have slipped by,
but that night
remains with me
as proof
that some things in life
can only be experienced in the moment.
Not everything is meant to live in the tangible.
In the light of day, it never happened.
Yet their memory - just as profound -
continues,
captured in the mind
for an eternity.
FERNANDO ZELAYA
Reflections on dancing partly written at the Lightning Field on September 22, 2024
I sit in a bed and stare out a window through which I see myself sitting in a bed. The voice next
to me asks What's your favorite memory of this place? I realize I'm only familiar with it at night.
I vow to never write the word I ever again.
Fate has decided things are to be until it decides otherwise.
There's something haunting about a pothole forming in the street where there wasn't
one before.
I am full of self suspicion.
I must watch how I behave.
Clarity - what is it that tethers me?
I've lived my whole life in one place.
This is my third attempt to write about running away.
I can't find words for things I can't hold.
We dreamt of dancing but never did.
I watched the sky turn dark.
The clouds resemble memories of shadows but I can't recall their names.
The air sounds different and the mountain range is beautiful.
I think to myself Where is the moon?
For a split second the voice next to me doesn't respond.
The edges of shadows are blurred
and the quality of light is both harsh and delicate at the same time.
I sit in a canyon propped up on a pedestal.
Things I wrote in past lives turn out to be true later on.
You'd love to see the stars.
The moon rose quick.
There's a light on the Bronx River Parkway that flickers at night.
It dances on and off and on and off.
LU GILLESPIE
Shadows from The Moonlight
Oh, King Peony
with heavy head held –
Emperor of ennui
Is it time that you fell?
What dreaded wind
Might put petals to land?
What scatters, sings
Stories of reverend
Lay your head
Shake out your bones
You still exist
Trawl digitaldrome
Look up stars
In our God shaped hole
Heavenly winged things
Flag on flagpole
What moves His hand
To delete
Noun of the land
Too strange to keep?
I wait I wait
I wail I weep
I steep in fear
I feel my weight
I wear my skin
I stretch my heart
I part the sea
I see no part
Every time, I faint, I dream
Of springtime blossoms
Of apple trees
Every time, you’re on a swing
Your back is turned
You’re sparkling
I faint, a little every day
To see you there
To watch you play
I dream, but still, I can’t reach you
I can’t call out
I cannot move
I dream so faint it’s hard to see
A moonless night
A strange ennui
To meet in flesh, it would be quicker
My eyes grow heavy
My sight, it flickers
In this land, there is no time
No sorry brows
No knowing lines
Every night, I sleep to dream
I’ll go to watch til you see me
And we will lay beneath that tree
HALLIE LEDERER
Sonnet for Winter
A young girl in a snowy park
sits in the somber fields
sleepily shielding the power she wields
and illuminating the dark.
A hand latches on to her face
and holds her there
for all to stare
and back to outer space
it goes, with just one golden finger.
Her eyes are searching the stars
as she forgets that day in winter.
She has gone too far.
Have I gone too far?
I can’t remember where we are.
Steezy Breezy
Steezy breezy blow it over
don’t think twice
blow it up
your nose explodes
smell flame and cinder
ash coating your fingers
just lick it off
and nuke the fridge
and pedal backwards
but don’t look back
and don’t think twice
and tell yourself
you’re getting better
steezy
easy
breezy
paradise.
Claire de Lune
A girl rose from her bed and glided across the room,
as if she was already dead,
and climbed up to the highest place she could,
which could only be the roof her parents had given her.
But she climbed anyway,
not realizing what was holding her in the air
until it was too late.
And with one faithful step her hope imploded
and collapsed inside her.
As she glided down through the moonlight
and the crisp night air
the Claire de Lune threatened to hold her up
in space and time,
in a frozen moment of peace
but couldn’t stay true
and dropped her to the ground
with a loud thud and a broken neck.
With a loud thud and a broken neck
she laid there
looking up at her roof
and forgetting.
CONTRIBUTORS
S. SUMAN & F. KURTER Born in Turkey and residing in the US, sisters
Suman and Kurter have worked together on many projects over the years,
including a collection of children’s stories - “Stop Pining” - translated from
Turkish to English forthcoming from The Missing Library Editions. One late
night, while reading their father’s obituary, the sisters are surprised to
read he is survived by his wife and their son. This incident becomes the
basis for their ongoing collaborative work in translation: Impossible
Directions / Unnatural Disasters* - A Manual for Collecting, and sets into
motion their on again off again dalliance with Insomnia.
SUNNY ZHENG-HERB is a Chinese-American writer and artist, raised in the
“626” Asian-majority suburb of Southern California. She is a painter and
musician and teaches high school visual arts in Aurora, CO. She also works
as the worship and youth director of a small parish church called Sacred
Grace Englewood. Her previous writing experience includes gallery
publications, grant-writing, museum wall text, and a dissertation on
Asian-American visual politics. She is working on her first book, a memoir
on trauma, chronic pain and wrestling to believe.
Website: Sunny Zheng-Herb
ALICIA TEBEAU-SHERRY studied writing at the University of Vermont. Her
poetry has been published in the Cold Lake Anthology and UVM’s The Gist,
and she is currently a poetry reader for Variant Literature. Her poems
attempt to grab at moments and trap the senses, and when she is not
writing, she runs for fun and reads too much.
LUCKY STIFF (they/he) is a trans/nonbinary director, writer, and performer
working in Chicago and New York. Their work has been featured at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre Company,
Goodman Theatre, Blue Man Group Chicago, Boy Friday Dance Company,
and the McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep No More) among many others.
@lucky.stiff
luckystiffdrag.com
RAPHAEL KRASNOW teaches English at Black Rock High School, an
alternative continuation school in Yucca Valley, CA. He is a graduate of
Portland State University, holding a Masters in Education. He resides in
Palm Springs with his 13-year-old daughter and cat, Demarcus. Raphael is
a long-time lover of fantasy and science fiction. He spends his spare time
playing piano and Mario Kart with his daughter.
For most of my life, as a writer, my work has been tied to an inability, or
unwillingness, to go to sleep. The stillness of my universe between
midnight and 4 AM has been the optimal setting for my creativity, buoyed
by the moon and the stars and the feverish race of my heartbeat during
hour 20 of wakefulness. I think, as well, there is something to be said for
the danger, the thrill, and the teeming possibilities from feeling like the
only one still buzzing in a city asleep. This work is indicative of how I have
interacted with my insomnia for the past few years.
REYHAN JONES’ works include memoirs, fiction, and children’s stories. A
part time botanist, she is a 2020 recipient of the ECU Millhouse Grant.
Jones is deeply invested in an exploration of migration, whether physical
or mental, inspired by ambiguous nativity as found in the plant world.
Inspired by her insomnia and late night wanderings, Jones’ most recent
publications include a short story in La Poubelle about night blooming
flowers of Central Asia and an essay for the Oister Review. She resides in
Bellport, Long Island.
STACY SEILER is a multi-disciplinary journalist, artist, and design educator
based in New York City. As the Art Editor of IRK Magazine, Stacy
contributes interviews and feature articles on the work of innovative
fashion designers and artists worldwide, including Maurizio Cattelan, Li
Edelkoort, Michael De Feo, Yuima Nakazato, and Studio Drift. Her artwork
has received features in Drawing Magazine, Photo Trouvée Magazine,
Common Ground, Oyedrum, Artistonish and The Studio Visit Book. She has
exhibited in notable institutions, including Sotheby's, Southern
Alleghenies Museum of Art, USM Museum of Art, The Gould-Guggenheim
Estate, Swiss General Consulate NY, Fashion Institute of Technology and
The Painting Center. In addition to her artistic practices, Stacy is an
Assistant Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design.
Stacy earned her BFA with a minor in Art History from the Maryland
Institute College of Art and her MFA from Parsons School of Design.
For a good part of my youth, insomnia was my enemy. It was an
unwelcome guest who appeared without warning and visited often. Then,
in the middle of a sleepless night, I had a complete shift in perspective. I
decided to embrace my inability to sleep, and I began to envision my
nocturnal existence as that of a spirit who roamed the corners of rooms
and peered through glass portals into the darkness unnoticed. It became
my time to explore the Yin of consciousness, steeped in silence and devoid
of judgment from others. In the end these somnolent observations formed
permanent memories o transient moments that I now grasp to capture in
tangible form.
@mywestvillagelife
www.stacyseiler.c
FERNANDO ZELAYA - I live in a constant state of mourning the passing of
every moment. I was born in Tegucialpa, Honduras on October 30, 1998
during Hurricane Mitch. I’ve lived in the Bronx, NY since I was about 2. I
made my first book(s) when I was in the fifth grade; short stories written
and poorly illustrated on loose leaf paper. I made my first photograph in
2015 on a family vacation, shortly before my senior year of high school. I
began making handmade books again throughout college. After I
graduated I began publishing other people’s books with friends, a process
which I fell in love with. I utilize different mediums such as photography,
video, and writing to engage with memory and the loss of it, extraction
and absence, familial histories, and nostalgia. I let chance dictate the
things I make; my photographs are not staged and my writing is
referential to lived experiences. These themes are then tied together in the
book form where narratives are formed with these disparate items.
@phernandozelaya
fernandozelaya.com
LU GILLESPIE is a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist and park bench poet
whose practice primarily examines digital landscapes– written both in
stone and in sand. While she completed a BS in Computer Science with a
minor in Studio Art from Washington University in St. Louis, her
sketchbooks and code often resemble something closer to poems and
stories. She currently works as a software engineer focused on
researching and developing experimental interfaces within emerging
technological environments.
@pathological__lair
HALLIE LEDERER is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, exploring
themes of adolescence, nostalgia and the impact that our formative years
have on our ongoing psyches in her poetry work. With a Master's degree in
Art Education, she is passionate about making a positive difference in the
world through the arts and fostering community by encouraging self
expression. Hallie is also a visual artist with a focus on painting and
collage.
@halz_art
hallielederer.com