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Writer's pictureThe Red Wheelbarrow Poetry

The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize 2021 Joint Third Place


Ian Bell


yesterday I drowned a rat, or rather

failed to rescue it from the rain barrel

when that is the singular thing it needed.


had it been a mouse, say, or a shrew, a vole,

a seriously misdirected mole, any rodent

cousin with anxious paws like a little


brown widow who’d lost her handbag, fine,

then I’d not have hesitated to offer it a twig;

but not a damned big rat, there I draw the line.


in school biology we’d opened one with a

scalpel and I’d looked among the damp

glistening coils for some part of it to blame


for the Great Plagues, the pestering of flesh

from corpses in Wars, the scaly tail looking

like the pickpocket implement of someone


who rigs races, sells stolen cars, takes good

watches off drunks in bars; then puzzled

all night about which part of me harbored


such callousness. Had places been reversed,

my thin-toed feet scrambling useless on a

course of sinking leaves, would any rat have

cared to look in me, for an organ of remorse?



IAN BELL is a Durban born and raised doctor, who retired recently after a 32 year career spent mostly in the practice of Emergency Medicine here and abroad. His memoir entitled Postcards from Accidents & Emergencies is currently in the hands of publishers, who, if they don’t stop dithering about it, may soon find themselves missing vital anatomical parts. He is a musician with the trio Thr3 Point Landing (to be seen on YouTube) who play old Ragtime and Blues material. With Douglas Livingstone as a surrogate Dad and mentor in his youth, he has made attempts at poetry since an early age, but to everyone’s enduring gratitude he has done little about getting this published. This may change.


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