You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query-continue>
    <allpages gapcontinue="Terminate_the_Racket_of_College_Loans" />
  </query-continue>
  <query>
    <pages>
      <page pageid="611" ns="0" title="Taking the Right Fork in the Road" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2017-06-29T19:07:05Z" lastrevid="2126" counter="888" length="4610" new="" />
      <page pageid="856" ns="0" title="Targeted States 2017" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2020-11-13T05:26:26Z" lastrevid="2805" counter="444" length="210" new="" />
      <page pageid="747" ns="0" title="Ten New Reasons Why Obamacare Can Still Be Stopped" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2017-07-22T05:04:15Z" lastrevid="2384" counter="824" length="5240" new="" />
      <page pageid="258" ns="0" title="Tennessee SJR 67" contentmodel="wikitext" pagelanguage="en" touched="2017-01-08T20:23:02Z" lastrevid="833" counter="1861" length="2577" new="" />
    </pages>
  </query>
</api>