Poetry by Damien Donnelly

                          Ryan CC



Ça Suffit !

I remember rainstorms
and running through straight lines
flooding cobbled streets,
laughter carries louder under brollies-
rises and falls back onto heads, onto faces,
onto mouths like that rain, like lips,
like tongues that taste of sweat and surrender
and something indescribable-
that tiny space we save for later
when we admit to knowing, while running,
that something was always missing.
I remember rainstorms
and running through all those shut Sundays 
of grey roofs and terracotta pots
on steps that collected rain drops 
as if it knew already
how much memory meant after, later,
when the sun came out
and there were no brollies to keep us together.
I remember rainstorms 
and running along all those boulevards
like they were battlefields 
and the droplets were bullets
and I couldn’t remember 
how to say that’s enough in French. 

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Damien, 45, Dublin born, returned to Ireland in 2019 after 23 years in Paris, London and Amsterdam, working in the fashion industry. His writing focuses on identity, sexuality and fragility. His daily interests revolve around falling over and learning how to get back up while baking cakes. His short stories have been featured in ‘Second Chance’ Original Writing, ‘Body Horror’ Gehenna & Hinnom, his poetry in ‘Nous Sommes Paris,’ Eyewear Publishing and The Runt Magazine. Online, he’s been featured in Black Bough Poetry, Coffin Bell, Barren Magazine, the Fahmidan Journal. His debut poetry collection was published by The Hedgehog Press in September 2020 when he also began a poetry podcast Eat the Storms, available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and most podcast platforms.