Troubled Summer
BY XENIA-CHLOE H. VILLANUEVA I OCTOBER 22, 2010

The humidity is perfect for contemplating,
like when plant forms kiss cable wire

murmuring disease onto black rubber skin.
Hot air travels the circuit, reaches the finger tips.

The body doesn’t know what to feel.
It thinks of suicide and making babies.
 
A boy wonders 
how he got here.
He took a bus to work and there was no one.
There is a holy mass 
at the lottery booth: 3 Million
snaking the streets. It is alive.

The city warps into black clouds —
They lead to a portal to another world.

In there, perhaps, a giant beast,
ancient by-product of the atom bomb
 
or the dead.
The lonely boy decides.

He takes his girl with him.
They power an old steamboat from the bay.

Out there, there is nothing yet;
Only sea and ocean and static.

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