Guest Poem by Colin Bell

Novelist Colin Bell’s poetry collection Remembering Blue was published in 2019 (Ward Wood Publishing). His second collection, Brief Encounters - 100 Fibs, is scheduled to be published (Ward Wood Publishing). His poetry has appeared in Acumen, Cinnamon Press, Frogmore Press, Shot Glass Journal, Soaring Penguin Press, The Blotter, The Fib Review, and several anthologies in the US and UK. He is Musepie Press' Featured International Poet, and his Fibonacci poetry has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

20/20

The wall was warm and red
it hummed with bees
a private place
away from the schoolhouse.

That’s how it was
before glasses
natural Impressionism
knowing nothing of art
or hard lines.

Then concave lenses in plastic frames
were like the leg irons
on my friend who had polio
or the man in the iron mask
locked in, looking out.
A foreign land less Monet than Dalí.

The wall was still warm
when the sun shone.
Ants crawled there
busy in the ivy-leaved toadflax.

Was this the wall
where boys would be lined up
when the Chinese invaded
like the vicar told us?

With glasses, I saw bullet holes.