NECROPOLITICS
Heart of Glass
– after Werner Herzog –
Now what will protect me
from the evil of the universe?
Nettles spring out of the factories.
Dig three feet into the earth.
The untidiness of the stars
makes my head ache
for the secret of ruby glass.
Should I leave this place?
I see many people running up a hill;
need something to contain my blood
or it will trickle away.
All the people danced in the red glow.
Their blood, their life, everything
is in the glass.
Everything is in this land
and everything is ruby.
Even the lake is dyed red.
Like sleepwalkers the people go towards their doom.
In the works, the men blow
the glass to planets.
Beer, sweat, the glow
of the cosmos new spun,
rotations in the holy doorway.
A glass horse is teased into being
fetlocks last.
(ii)
Arcs of molten light, ampoules
in the chemistry of a slow
centuries-long sedation.
The oldest laughs longest, the young maidservant
squawks during the harp performance.
All eyes blind, hooded.
When can we put the candle aside?
Christ awaits, on the cross.
Now we’re in and out
of the light of paintings
half grasped, infernal noise.
I tell you what I see,
don’t know if it will happen.
Peasants will dress like townspeople
and the townspeople will be like apes.
The murderer will dance to raise his victim again. He who has
smooth hands will be slain. No man will like another man.
All for ruby glass. The pure ingredient.
What are the factories still good for?
Could there be such a thing again?
Everyone will have a different head.
People become ill but no one can help them.
For twelve years there’s been no fire
and my shoes are gone,
says the old man
who was there at the beginning.
People settle down as though never wanting
to leave the world, but overnight
the clearing of the world begins.
As ever, the prophet is jailed
for beginning the fires.
STARGATE
MOONLANDING
PUNK ROCK SCHOOL DISCO
Stephen Sunderland is the author of film-novel The Cinema Beneath the Lake (forthcoming Orbis Tertius, 2025), and the visual poetry collections Eye Movement (Steel Incisors, 2022), Oneiroscope (Kingston University Press, 2023) Refrains (Steel Incisors, 2023) and Unforgettable Singing Animal (forthcoming, Ice Floe Press, 2026). His work also appears in anthologies Seen as Read (Kingston University Press 2021), Seeing in Tongues (Steel Incisors, 2023) and Popogrou Anthology (Kingston University Press, 2024); and in journals 3:AM, Mercurius, Overground Underground, Osmosis, Shuddhashar, Litter, The Debutante and Lune: A Journal of Literary Misrule. Find him on X @stephensunderla – and on Bluesky @stephensunderland@bsky.social
IceFloe Press 