Dengue Fever
by Craig Fishbane
—Phuket, Thailand, 2007
You are still not sure where she is taking you tonight.
This is not the route to the beach resorts,
the parties with paper lanterns and thatched umbrellas.
You are struggling to stay in place on her motorbike,
dry hands clinging to a bare midriff,
a studded brown navel protruding from a leather skirt.
She must be whispering a joke,
something about what happens to foreigners on this island,
this self-proclaimed jewel of the Andaman Sea.
You feel convulsions of laughter
as she guns the engine on the empty road.
The guidebook warned about the accident rates in this country,
the dismal conditions of the highways.
Nothing has prepared you for the darkness
when lights from the beer bar disappear
in silhouettes of forested mountains.
You cannot remember if you took your second malaria pill.
A thousand insects seem to have bitten all at once,
infecting you with conditions
that cannot be guarded against, especially at these latitudes.
Your bones ache at the maneuvers around potholes in the asphalt.
A tiny ribcage is heaving beneath your grip,
beads of perspiration soaking through a black crop top.
Something awful begins pounding
behind eyes that have grown heavy and unreliable.
Even your mouth is useless. You cannot find words to scream in the heat.
Breathing is a sickness with no cure.
Craig Fishbane has been published in the New York Quarterly, Flashquake, Opium and Barbaric Yawp. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2008. His chapbook, "Dengue Fever," will be put out by BoneWorld Publications in the summer of 2011.