文章基本信息

Ending, The

Hall, Donald

He wakes under a canopy of ice, and dreads

to swing his feet to the cold pine, unable

to work in the useless house. Nausea

occupies sixteen hours before sodden sleep.

Gone her dark thicket, gone her riding

with her hair fallen around her small head,

rapture gone, her mouth twisted and fists

pounding his back, fuck me, fuck me, gone.

The Learjet flies four hours on automatic pilot,

ice on the windows so thick that an F-i5

flying alongside cannot see the bodies

strapped and frozen in their leather seats.

Fifty miles away, her narrow fist reaches

down her throat, and gouts of stomach blood

rush in a flux of exhilaration, the coming

of gorged food, bile, eight knuckles bleeding.

DONALD HALL lives on a farm in New Hampshire. He has published a dozen books of poetry, of which the most recent is Without.

photograph by Linden Frederick