I remember your face in the cigarette smoke
drifted and turned. I remember my baptism
at your mouth--labor of blackened tendons,
of hooks and eyes to drag a shape, the glutinous
tissues jumping to sound: it must be your heart
began as light as cork and dead to sound, then, sounding,
went out, down, dragging the face and its illusory
life. Some fossils leave a living coelacanth,
momentary residue, and though you’d disapprove,
inside my mouth your stone fish rise and sing.