Marietta Brill

Been called drowned girl

Yangzte goddess, shallows ghost

glint, surge beneath the glint

but in the end I, dolphin, became

my own namesake, lipotes: the left-behind

a singularity and relic of the spillway

from a Miocene sea.

Once I was a blue carve of mid-river purls

eddies and oxbows of the Yangtze

but I have no name for this waterway

my river has become

my clan caught in darkwater slipstreams

beneath massive surface machines

and I, left-behind, chasing random

echolocations of absent cousins—

or is it angry gods calling me downriver