Bio
Mark McDonnell lives in Staffordshire, England, with his wife, his teenage twins and two cats. He teaches English in a secondary school. His poetry has appeared in various journals including The Dark Horse, Antiphon and Measure, and he was on shortlisted for the 2017 TLS Mick Imlah Poetry Prize.
Mark McDonnell
1991
I was looking handsome.
She was looking like an erotic vulture
Pixies
The sudden rain we sheltered from had plans
for us, it seemed. I saw how neon lined
your face – a raptured saint. And pressed behind
the heaving pub, in a dull extractor fan's
insistent heat, we felt that backstage thrill,
that dirty glamour which makes perfect sense
but only to the young. In that intense
and greasy hum, the wetness of the pill
against your tongue was like a sum done right,
and all the messed up days, and home, went spinning
up into the sky. I held you, grinning,
felt you almost faint and then take flight –
your vulture wings unfolding, sleek and strong.
I remember all of this. I may be wrong.