Fish Magic

Here lies the holy fish: its fading gloss
Comes off as tacky sequins on your hand.
Nothing averts its eyes of milk and glass,
Or improves the dead sourness
Of its downward mouth.

White meat conveyed to the white tooth,
That melts in a memory of salt,
That leaves its last taste on your tongue —
But it leaps to life in a thousand
Chevrons of bone, is away
In infinite flicks of muscle,
In the only afterlife it knows,
The resurrection of numbers.

Lawrence Sail