Felicity Teague

Gallery Ward

It wasn’t really built to showcase Art,
this bustling space, upon the upper floor
of one small building with a tarmac court
for ambulances, vans. Just push the door

and here we are: this is the final stage
of many patients’ visits. On the left,
the area for staff, where plans are laid
for discharge, on the whole – the warp and weft

of ascertaining who is safe for home
and who requires a different exit plan,
while on the right, we patients wait in rooms –
four, altogether. Staff do what they can

to tend to all the needs of sixteen beds;
it would be twenty-four, but at this time
an evil lingers, causing daily deaths –
Covid-19. The coughing fits, the slime

of phlegm, the need for distance in these bays
has changed the story that the pictures tell.
The chinless mouthless noseless tired-eyed face
the masks create prevails, as does the gel

for washing at each little back-wall sink
immediately after acts of care.
Meanwhile the patients mostly sleep or sit
upon our single bed or bedside chair –

except when mealtimes come around again,
the breakfast trolley, lunch and dinner cart.
We eat, we talk, we battle through our pain
on Gallery. It wasn’t built for Art.

Felicity Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor by day and a poet come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; other journals that have published her work include Lighten Up Online, Amethyst, New Verse Review, Snakeskin, The Dirigible Balloon, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her first collection (2022) is titled From Pittville to Paradise; her second (forthcoming), Interruptus: A Poetry Year. Other interests include art, film, and photography.