Singapore: Dog Days on the Equator

It's hard to imagine, especially in this cold, that there's much difference between summer and winter in Singapore, since it lies just 1 degree north of the equator, but there is.

Singapore: Dog Days on the Equator

My umbrella and I unroll as one.

Relentless

summertime throbs,

forges lasers

which excavate glass,

even the clouds on the horizon

                                                glint.

Workers fell thousand-year-old 

                  rain forests for skyscrapers,

drag the isle into a first world country

       with Prada and Louis Vuitton.

Singaporean law retains caning for street

spitting and hanging for drug dealing.

I sweat freon, ambivalence

                             in this land of high heat.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor