Wife-Stealer

In the floods upstream, a husband  
slips, lets go of a hand, and a wife  
glides away, clinging to garbage.  
 
As bodies pile up against the dam,  
the biohazard-cocktail of the Yangtze  
drives along in a grave fog, a fish-killer,  
 
crop-flooder, wife-stealer.  Three days missing,  
and they show her wide eyes on the news, over  
and over.  The eyes tell us:  I am already given  

to water.  It is worse than any movie—she will  
not be found.  She stares into the camera, as her  
bobbing head disappears, and we are transfixed.  
 
Her televised death plays again and again,  
each time the video cutting to her frantic husband,  
his short reach, the wailing circle of his mouth.  
 
Now, somewhere along the banks, oily branches form  
her quiet cage.  Hair is tangling in the rushes, soft muck  
caressing her corpse, as the river cherishes its spoils.  
 

 
*Note: This poem also appears in The Montucky Review:  
http://montuckyreview.blogspot.com/search/label/Lauren%20Tivey