Carte Postale by Luke Heeley

The introduction to Jacques le Fataliste relates
how Diderot breathed his last at the breakfast table
one morning as he reached for the cherry jam.
Candlelight reaches towards neglected corners.
A greenfly lands in my beer, imprisoned now
in the surface tension. I prise it away
with a postcard of a boulanger standing proudly
outside his window. The ink runs.
The postmark blurs. All those years must have gone
somewhere: I imagine they lie
on the passenger seat of Jean-Paul Belmondo's car
in A Bout de Souffle. Preconceptions fall away
as if they were drunk snails. It is inductive logic
that tells us the sun will return in the morning.
I fill in the gaps with home-made myths:
a shudder signifies the passage of a ghost
through your body. I close the book
and extinguish the flame between finger and thumb.
A car glides past. Its headlights illuminate
the wall, fanning across a half-remembered face.


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Luke Heeley features as Connaissances' first invited poet. Luke is originally from Lincolnshire. He studied philosophy and literature at the University of Warwick, then creative writing at the University of St Andrews. He currently lives in Herne Hill, London. His poetry has been published in a number of magazines, including The Wolf and The Red Wheelbarrow, as well as the e-zines Boomerang and The Poem. Selections of his work have also been published in the anthologies Reactions 4 (pen&inc press) and Phoenix New Writing (Heaventree Press). In 2002 he received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry. He is currently finishing post-production of a short film-poem about London, made in collaboration with Luca Paci, an Italian poet and filmmaker.

This is the first in a series of invited poetry contributions. Accompanying illustration by Jonathan Wonham.