Year of the Lizard

"Monitors" wiped the boards, saw
that floors were cleared of mud, spied
on students and teachers for the Party.
Secret? No, we all knew who they were.

A throw-away comment: never seen kindness
to animals there. Next day, she stood below
our window, petting a mangy dog she'd enrolled.
Naïve, I was impressed; ate my words.

Then we were out, and she bathed in Peking's praise
for reporting thoughtcrime and saving the school.
Used the kudos to escape Guizhou, nowhere province,
with a one-way ticket to Shanghai dreams,

where times proved tough for a down-home girl
till she pulled taut strings to a hierarch's bed,
rose in that new world from his fresh-stained sheets.
She'd only loved women before. It showed.
 
He wasn't satisfied long; shortly, she was history.
Then her qualities cut in: leadership, icy calculation,
unflinching opportunism, moral blindness,
as did her contacts, taking up the Guizhou thread,
 
drawing its hungry masses to her, and beyond,
in boats, containers, sealed lorries, bust buses,
caravanserais of misery bonding dispensable bodies
to enrich snakeheads beyond their miserable dreams.

Dangers persist: turf-trodden Triads, yet-to-bend cops,
a spark of awareness among her hungry merchandise.
Or just the memory of a perfunctorily patted pup
moving in delight at her unexpected touch.

Notes.
Guizhou: A very poor, rural province in south-west China.
Snakeheads: people-traffickers, often members of Mafia-style groups known as Triads.