Absence by Michael Lynch

There is inside her words a river where no one speaks
the branches of dead trees appearing here as white roots
her hands weaving inside the white water’s texture the eyes of a young woman standing without movement

I thought perhaps it was the light later she said it was
the stillness that held her to this crossing the wind sudden in its absence frozen within that memory of white

I asked her, after awhile, Who are you? she was so still, her eyes, her hands empty, the light without movement I imagined she was telling me again how we would never be absent from each other because of the words we use to dream each other into existence
even now years later
the light covering the statue’s eyes white with sun
I hear again the silence

her hands cupping its stillness like a shell holding me here, whispering into the empty trees
seeing the six white birds passing above my words like a boat drifting into the stone eye of the bridge,

where on the other side is the boatman wearing a soft hat like mine an old man telling his story knowing in that same instant it is a boy’s too, the past and the future reversed, no longer holding each other’s hands now we have gone past the barrier

she told me once there is a woman thinking of you
who brings you into existence though I knew each man she remembered would have the same lines in his hands, his eyes
each evening by the river each afternoon would see the small moon behind the curtains becoming the light that was absent inside all things that die,
the smell of her hands even now in this light have become a stone heavy with emptiness

remember she said to me that day, we must forgive each other and god

each time

the absence that is here inside our words becomes like an invisible child hiding from the light’s annihilation



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Michael Lynch lives in a small village in the South of France and teaches creative writing at the Skidmore College Program in France. Most of his work has been published by small presses. His most recent book was called "Experiments in the Architecture of Light". He has also published a novel: "An American Soldier" (Little Brown) and has recently finished working on a trilogy. An opera libretto which he wrote, "The Magician", won a National Endowment for the Arts award.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom, Beverley Bie Brahic, Ethan Gilsdorf, Amy Hollowell, Choman Hardi, and Jeramy Dodds, Jennifer K. Dick. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

A stanza in the snow, as equal by Jennifer K. Dick

                             (ties) (lies) (-fuge)
Within that subtle

graze the key, stroke back
in that dining, that mahogany
contemporary debate His hands

Breaking

Hers
blue-white         Is she
the smallest dish, this porcelaine
sealed room
                       within which Machiavelli writes--
My prince, why this tingling absence?
Eleven figures march along, six
carry the casket, time
ticks in the ear, season-change,
backcount to this divide

when
               180 x2             or 2x
equals Us
                        U.S.
                                   You as or are
Capt
               that Inter
Ruption
               a corrective
Squal
               this (disem-) body
Fall into the stone
crypt within what banks          She

Atop or on or
crumble the pages
follow
               For folly is
this bedlam
bedfellow sequestered
That You, that he,
We: house arrest—

Venice in Medici Machiavellic gates
(gardenless) (the values)

subtract

His              Grasp            Her
stanza in the snow, as equal.


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Jennifer K. Dick was born in Minnesota, raised in Iowa and currently lives in Paris, France where she works as a teacher of American Literature, Creative Writing and English. She has carried out doctoral research in the field of Comparative Literature with an emphasis on Visual studies, Modernism, Postmodernism and the Avant-garde. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Colorado State University. Her published works include the book Fluorescence (University of Georgia Press, 2004), Retina/Rétine (Estepa Editions, Paris, 2005) and ENCLOSURES (BlazeVox, New York, 2007).

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom, Beverley Bie Brahic, Ethan Gilsdorf, Amy Hollowell, Choman Hardi, and Jeramy Dodds. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Lions of the Work Week by Jeramy Dodds

It was the year I subscribed to an absurd
amount of magazines, there were lions everywhere.
Lions at the tambourines, lions in the gate house, lions
up the sleeve of your bible black dress, you could set your watch
by the screams, the shimmy-shackle of claws
on the hardwood floor wore down your ears, ghosts
of lions fathered our kids, lions of the long grass,
Barnum & Bailey types, we knelt at the scimitar scar
on the tamer's breast as valets brought lions upon lions,
lions going at us with the violence of a clearance sale, my wife
comes home with a lion between her legs, antelope musk
hog-tied in her mouth, bed-lamp bright wounds,
a yoke of tear-jars tingling from her nicked shoulders,
lions cornered in her cranium, the wedding dancers slain,
their scattered organs like gobs of fruit, lions
at the chink in our amour, lions on the owls, lions
like labs, the house pets snapped, lions loaded for bear,
lions at the crypt ledger jotting down kills,
plaster casts of claws above our cancer ward doors, lions
past the curtains of our ribs, pant like whistling arrows,
starved lions, hair painted on their bones,
lions in the yard with kids, lions
at the midnight fridge, chicken on their lips,
lions at the watering hole bullying
for beer money, lions mowing through
the Foot Guard, Beefeaters, Dragoons,
standing in perfect pecking order
at my bedside, waiting for me to snap
the bones of my watch onto my wrist and dress
in their gift of slipper-thin armour.


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Jeramy Dodds grew up in Ontario, Canada. His poems have been translated into Finnish, Icelandic, Swedish, Latvian, Dutch and French and have appeared in a number of international journals. He is the winner of the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, and his first collection of poems Crabwise to the Hounds, will be out this fall from Coach House Books (Canada). This poem, Lions of the Work Week and the illustration above Lounge Lions were recently published in Issue 9 of Upstairs at Duroc magazine which is now available from WICE.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom, Beverley Bie Brahic, Ethan Gilsdorf, Amy Hollowell, and Choman Hardi. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Sometimes by Choman Hardi

She says: sometimes we glorify
a dead person, a short love affair.

Sometimes, she says,
we glorify a person because they are dead
we long for an affair because it was short.

Today is the day, she says.
There is no point in missing this sunshine
by remembering another,
no point in thinking yesterday was fine
as this moment is.

But as the clouds slide across the sky
she thinks of him
of that cold Christmas night
when she stayed awake
to watch him sleep.

There is no point, she says,
no point but she thinks of him.


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Choman Hardi has published three books of poetry in Kurdish, but now writes in English. Her first book in English, Life for Us is published by Bloodaxe. She studied philosophy and psychology at Oxford and later at University College London, and has recently completed doctoral research at the University of Kent on the mental health of Kurdish women refugees caught between the clash of cultures. She has recently moved to Paris.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom, Beverley Bie Brahic, Ethan Gilsdorf and Amy Hollowell. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Episode 36 (Bosquet) by Amy Hollowell

Didascalie

(Dreams of a him rising, a rising hymn of Him. A he-swagger and thrust. And by Him beheld. Ancient strength of stones, endless wash and spray of fatherlover sea befairing Her. Yes but no! She is without and within withallready Her. Yes but no! Forwith Him two she is too. Yes but no! Forto Him she is giving of Her. And receiving. Arising a hymn of Him: Ça monte! Ça monte! Ça monte! It’s her song to sing now.)


Episode 36 (Bosquet)


Bamboo in the tallness grove instills
where freshly she intends.


An answer
stepping into
her:


Looking here a fall rustle
dryly and shoots,
here too a look
hollowing into crisp shortness
where a sundapple groove
is her am.



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Amy Hollowell is a poet, journalist and Zen teacher who lives in Paris. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications in Europe and the United States, including Big Bridge, Diner, Fourteen Hills, LUNGFULL and Tricycle, and she has new work in Upstairs at Duroc Issue 9. She is a former editor of the Paris-based review Pharos and the author of a book-length poetic work, Peneloping: Episodes in the Day of She, from which Episode 36 (Bosquet) is excerpted. In 2004, she founded the Paris-based Wild Flower Zen community. She is currently writing an experiential study of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Her writing and teaching can be followed on the Web at zenscribe.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom, Beverley Bie Brahic and Ethan Gilsdorf. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Headlines from Childhood by Ethan Gilsdorf

Drinking, smoking mom gives birth to “normal” boy
Clueless toddler makes “hide the salami” joke
Lamby found under snow bank in May: The shocking details

Neighborhood boys crucify sister to pine tree
Living room study: Dog farts cause drowsiness
How to eat zucchini: “Glass of milk” secret revealed

Walk to corner store: Not exactly “miles”
After divorce, sad family eats omelets, yogurt shakes for dinner
Recovering Mom tosses buttered roll

Julia Child ignores squabble in New Hampshire home
Boy catches falling television: “Wheel of Fortune” saved
Area teen speechless after fourth orgasm

Mr. Bonnacorsi: Does he really hump lab station?
Gov’t report: 1,023 PB&Js eaten since 8th grade
In historic agreement, woman lets ex- inside house

“Left on red” dooms driving test
Gymnastics, jazz dance still considered “gay”
Beer, Playboy gift from aunt: Sending wrong message?

D&D, A/V club: “chick magnets”?
College-bound senior technically still virgin
High school musical proves even geeks can sing



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Ethan Gilsdorf lives in the Boston area, where he makes his living as a freelance journalist, poet, critic, editor and teacher. His articles, poems and essays have been published in dozens of magazines, newspapers, guidebooks and literary journals world-wide. The winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esmé Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, Gilsdorf has been awarded grants from the Vermont Arts Council and Somerville Arts Council/Mass Cultural Council, and residencies at the Millay Colony, the Hall Farm Center for Arts and Education, the New Pacific Studio and Vermont Studio Center.

His poems can be seen in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Poetry London, plus anthologies like Future Welcome; Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry; Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles and Renegades; Radio Waves: Poems Celebrating the Wireless; and In the Criminal's Cabinet. Gilsdorf was also the Paris regional coordinator for Poets For Peace/United Poets Coalition. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) in Boston. For more information visit his web site.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift, Michelle Noteboom and Beverley Bie Brahic. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

In Which, Many Years Later in Vancouver, We Watch a Movie Made in Saskatoonby Beverley Bie Brahic

At the bottom of the garden a flat brown ribbon,
the Saskatchewan, reels through prairie
and the city where a woman snaps sweet peas

and blows kisses at the camera. Sweet peas
the color of sweet peas fixed
by 60-year-old sunbeams; the sun—the same sun—

splatters raspberry canes and a border
of salvia, blood dried rusty brown;
outside Dad’s den, that we’ve squeezed into

to review this relic—now on video—
the same sun casts teepee shadows
across the winter beds, a bluff

above the ocean, which sighs.
Gusts of sweet peas and nostalgia.

The woman is beautiful, a mother
whose infant totters on the lawn. The father is overseas.
He has not seen his daughter. Was the movie for him?

You'd never guess there was a war on. A table
set in the garden, grass mowed,
shrubs and hedges and unscathed people

nod to the camera. Who is the absent eye
behind the camera? The mother changes;
baby naked, then in gingham

scorched at the edges, and flesh ocher.
The lawn is evergreen, chairs familiar
but the river is gone, my mother says.

Under the garden’s particles of light,
my mother says. The river is gone.



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Beverley Bie Brahic is Canadian. Her poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Poetry (Chicago), Poetry Review, the TLS, Verse and elsewhere. The winner of a Canada Council Emerging Writer Grant, her collection Against Gravity was published by Worple Press last year. She is the translator of books by Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, as well as several French poets, and she lives in Paris.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle, Todd Swift and Michelle Noteboom. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Name that rune by Michelle Noteboom

A tisket, a tasket, what’s he got in his basket? Supersize vacuum-packed variations on a smoking gun. In the tale he was tragic, aristocratic and ever so slightly bovine, emblematic of an indentured century and a Holiday Inn. Unbathed homunculus in a wobbling machine. Let’s clink to that. (Ce choufleur qui s’écroule dans son cœur…) Some thing’s amiss.
Yes, we have no Krispy Kremes, so treat yrself to a pair of odor-eaters instead (after maneuvering the emotional minefield and coming out unscathed). Shhhhh, the white noise just got whiter or else the gnashing of a million-some mandibles out there in the tiny field. Indigenous smog. It should be illegal to have hands that soft and what they held was less an instrument than an extension. Bipolar exposure of unstudied vistas is not some day in day out kind of thing. Anthracite satellite circling the earth, hydroponic disciples of the real; but then the cows come home to roost in the shed of new light and before you know it the horizon is gone. As a boy he dreamed of being a Tesla coil wrangler but wound up with an MBA instead. Making snides in the world. Pinafores and patent leather, the better to reflect you with, my dear. The bug on his finger wasn’t exactly squashed though not necessarily thriving either. Schizophrenia translates sweetly into first-world guilt.



+ + + + + + + +



Michelle Noteboom won the 2006 Heartland Poetry Prize for her first book Edging (Cracked Slab Books). Other work has appeared in Verse, Fence, Boston Review, Sentence, Columbia Poetry Review and MiPOesias, among others. She's lived mainly in Paris since 1991 where she co-curates the Ivy Writers Reading Series with Jennifer K. Dick. She works as a freelance translator in the French audiovisual industry. She also translates French poetry.


This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez, Rufo Quintavalle and Todd Swift. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Warming by Todd Swift

Each day, the glacier at the pole of my walk
To the store where I buy stamps and milk
Diminishes, threatening the few species

Living on the floes of my more and more mild
Heart - the white bears that stalk feelings
Especially, are finding less and less wild

So, land-tamed and ice chipped back, fall
Into tepid water nearly warm enough to drink;
This inner tundra of my self is fraught,

As all tundra and all selves are, with caught
Nature, since natures prowl and thrive best
When least talked of and more talked through,

As if the mesh between prisoner and love
Let tongues cross between the cold grate
Without piecemeal cutting of their red kiss.

Seismic or simply a breaking off of a chunk
Of berg, then, this shift in clime, from frigid
To temperate, from morning to much too late?

And what is the flag or thermometer planted
At the beef-pink core of my claimed identity
Doing to the radius around that place,

That may or may not still be me, like waves
That radar-blip out like tea stains from the cup
Onto the paper, browning space circularly?

Can one finger of ice - an icicle maybe -
Expose itself to the frost, and be mine,
While another, cut off, tossed to dogs, lost -

Endures another winter or summer, unnamed?
This wilderness-warming is like an earthquake
Tamed, stroked down so it sleeps, a white cat

Curled against the ground, nice and flat;
The sky is flake on flake on flake of snow,
Which is all I know of winter, need to know,

For hell is ice and heaven blue sky thinking
There are clouds above. I miss my own dead,
Despite the cooling zones inside that run to spring.



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Montreal-born Todd Swift is the author of three poetry collections: Budavox, Cafe Alibi, and Rue du Regard. He is also editor of numerous anthologies which include: Poetry Nation, 100 Poets Against The War and Future Welcome. In 2005 he edited "The New Canadian Poetry", for New American Writing. He is poetry editor of Nthposition online magazine, a contributing editor for Matrix, Core Tutor with The Poetry School, a module leader on the creative writing MA at Kingston University, London and, since 2004, Oxfam Great Britain's Poet-in-residence. Vehicule Press (Montreal) will shortly publish his new book 'Language Acts' (co-edited with Jason Camlot), the first study of Anglo-Quebec poetry in 40 years. Catch up with all Todd's activities on his Eyewear blog.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman, Ivy Alvarez and Rufo Quintavalle. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Slog by Rufo Quintavalle

I saw a grub so vast and disgusting
people took it for a dirigible,
thought there was a war and started shelling
peanuts, playing with their children, humping
the night’s dead down the backstairs each morning.
War breeds war, mulberry leaves feed silkworms,
most everytime I hear Mahler dying
young seems easy not heroic, same goes
for religion and autumn afternoons,
harder seems to make your peace and just keep
on doing the same things until you die.


++++++++


Rufo Quintavalle was born in London, studied English at Oxford University and then at the University of Iowa. He now lives in Paris. His poetry has been published in The Wolf and Upstairs at Duroc Issue 8.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes, Elizabeth Spackman and Ivy Alvarez. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

peach dress by Ivy Alvarez

too much skin
to fit in

she arches out against the bite
of teeth

recoiling avoiding curving away
her peach dress betrays

she tries to turn away
from naïveté

the zip tries to hold everything in
until the zip bit in

and teeth bit out
their sharp constellations


++++++


Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006) and the editor of A Slice of Cherry Pie (The Private Press & Half Empty/Half Full), a chapbook anthology of poems inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross, George Szirtes and Elizabeth Spackman. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Poem with Three Addresses by Elizabeth Spackman

Having made themselves drunk they no longer said ‘Let us do penance.’
    — From “The Life of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl,” The Codex Chimalpopoca


I. Aromatherapy

Stare up at the dappled asbestos ceiling
the one part in this room unadorned.
You, Trish, tend my exposed parts,
drape and re-drape the sheet that keeps
us decent. The Zen rock fountain trickles
on and on. Would let you yank my strain
straight from my bones, but your touch skims
light all but my face and what my bartender
termed her tired titty-pussy-triangle. No matter,
for now I can redeem such touch myself
or for no coined fee. Flip over—
ours still a professional relationship.
There are many kinds. Your kindness
of touch not one I could give another:
my hands might crumple, fistfuls of flesh
turn tinker toy tales. A fear perhaps
not rational. Exchange we say we understand:
given a pound of flesh, small pittance
for a rub-a-dub-dub, line up
our ducky economies all in a row. Love
that assured manicure in pink, softly striated
hair, small peels of color on your sleepy lids.
We are not friends, I know,
but trust I am trying
to be a body suspended, give up
to your hands. Overlook
my clothes crumpled in the corner, tell me
practice will make me better
at this particular relaxing. I will not blink
as you pat rose oil onto my limbs,
know the scent will make me rash. Let it cling
to my skin, sweat us sweet for a week. The inside
fuzz of my sweatshirt licks its slick kiss
and I wear that lint like some new blue down.


II. Perseids

water off our backs and under
            nothing they could bring us here,   we
two girls in touching distance   creaky dock   sky   splinters of lights with no need
            for names.   you could do the math to find our astral coordinates and I wonder
if that leaves my thoughts sullied, even our ablution down and dirty

            but you remembered the cookies, and I haven’t won at scrabble yet
so later we’ll light the gaslights for a game,   tomorrow do our unlady-like
            scramble granite   let the rope coil
snap into the canoe, swim to the rock and again all bare but for sandals,   the twice
            pass her by boaters won’t seem to mind.

Now we and wood and water, no harness to hold us up nor loss to slow our fall.
            you say, power is a liquid, who would want to hold its weep? I say,
Say albedo.   See if we can name these streaks like numbers.   Say it again.


III. Hannah,

Over a week ago now I paid a woman to touch my back.
Down in the Cities you were paid to clean floors;

I think you would be bewildered one of our own would give so much for the knead of another’s hands. I’ve come back to this place, wonder Could this be your hair still left in a forgotten top shelf brush,

un-blonded? I wouldn’t know your helix. I’ve craved this shimmy of birch leaves, that whiff of pine, but would you have even remarked, you who rarely left these trees?

I am told it is uncouth to address someone in a poem with what they already know, but as you’re dead, I can’t tell what you might want. At this place

I can name what is: the autumn water fowl— two loons left behind, the puckered shore where the ice took the dock, lake water to drink and lisäå loyloää—more steam—

to erase. I can complicate with what I know: my father’s first dog who’s puskaa you cursed and who was later poisoned by a neighbor, the slope of ramp that some days delivers

my sullen mother to this, her northern confinement. I don’t know what you ever said; perhaps you would tell me your son’s six boys can eat at least twelve dozen fresh doughnuts.

All I have of you: a picture at the side of Lake Eshequagama:
well-cut overalls, in your left hand slung a giant fish. Hannah, tell us,

we are wasting, tired, remiss. I am asking for my students (preposterous
to learn from me), my teachers (as ridiculous to ask of you).

I know only the moon you saw, a floor you swept, but if you
tell us, we will wash our faces in the sauna ash,

we will wear our condescension as a collar. Hannah Haapa if you can, tell us
how to forgive our unmarked faces, our lightly soiled

shoes. Don’t leave us here, dangling hook through palette,
twitching while we gawk at the shifting speed of light. Cradle us instead

in your free hand— all of us, bodies seeping—as you might hold pellets for the chipmunks’ maw.


++++++


Elizabeth Spackman studied philosophy at University of California Berkeley and received her MFA from the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. Her work has appeared in ibid and Upstairs at Duroc. Currently, she is adrift in the world, looking for the next city to call home.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley, Joe Ross and George Szirtes. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Dust skin glove bowl by George Szirtes(After Helio Oiticica)

You plunge your hands in wearing gloves,
You plunge your skin in the dirt in the bowl,
In earth the colour of mouse or mole
Or the burnt edge of the planet where droves
Of creatures sift through living rust.

And this is the colour, your own dust,
The dust of the self in which you lurk,
To which you and your eyes belong,
Where your parched mouth sings a raw song
Of dunes and gardens, where you work
Your eyes and hands and where all art
Is lexicon or colour chart.

Here dust becomes you. Gloves become your skin.
You wear your body as you might a gown:
Dust skin glove bowl, median brown,

Like washing clothes, like a good scrubbing down
With the colours you live and die in.


+++++++++


George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, most recently 'Reel' (Bloodaxe, 2004) which won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize in 2005. He has also published a substantial number of works translated from Hungarian, both poetry (Agnes Nemes Nagy, Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky) and fiction (Sándor Márai, László Krasznahorkai). For more information, please visit his web site.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. Previous contributors were Luke Heeley and Joe Ross. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

Didactic by Joe Ross

It is comfortable
a chair under –
what stood.

That you can
not stand. Is
ground under
feet.


+++++++++++++


Joe Ross is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently, EQUATIONS = equals, Green Integer Press, 2004. He was the Literary Editor of the Washington Review, and co-founded both the In Your Ear reading series in Washington, D.C. and the Beyond the Page reading series in San Diego, CA. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for his poetry in 1997. He presently resides in Paris.

This is part of a series of poems from invited poets. The first contributor was: Luke Heeley. Illustration by Jonathan Wonham.

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.