Rain Dance

by Christopher Cocca

It's hot as hell here in July and my air conditioner's broken and the passenger's window's jammed. 22 is closed and they say it's under construction. I say the whole fucking place is. I make it to my parents' house in shit time and punch it up the street as the sky around me flashes and the radio cracks just before the lighting and the thunder half a step after and you can smell it but there's no rain. Silver clouds rise like mountains and there's fire at the peaks, everything is charged like Tesla Coils but there's not enough of anything to break the heat or bring a change and I don't hear screams or horns or sirens and so I'm driving faster. I think about a drink and then again about rolling it, about things to cut the tension and I am like July before the rain, I think, danger and power and nowhere to go, hot as hell and almost broken.

6S

Christopher Cocca lives in Allentown, PA. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Elimae, Boston Literary Magazine, Geez Magazine, Brevity, and The Lantern (the literary journal of Ursinus College).