Paul Groves
Fly in a Hospital
The bluebottle, in helmet and goggles, circuits the ward,
a mad aviator who will end up in Casualty. Beds glide past
like battleships rising out of the mist of a warm sea;
on board, the infirm drift towarrds the horizon of their pain
or the sure footfall of land. It stops. Plaster of Paris
is warily explored by six legs; oiled suckers
scale the smooth incline that coats a tibia, until
a launch towards the menu of new discovery:
four-star restaurant of the sluice, chic diner of damp sheets.
Everywhere nurses frown like distracted doormen
at its presence; its appetite is frequently denied
by waving hand, brandished magazine. Rumour has it
the basement contains a delicatessen of cold meat,
name-tags gracing big toes. For now, shrivelled grape
and crumpled tissue suffice, though it hopes
for a used dressing before the day is out. Wings
beat on, conveying it to the curtailment of desire:
gorged satisfaction; exhaustion locking it to a ceiling;
houseman’s irritated swot. Until then, to cruise
is to live, chained to the freedom of hunger and disease,
magnetised by bound wound and drained groin,
sickened by its own aerial insistence.
Page(s) 71
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