I walk into the restaurant, a genetic legacy.
I feel like eating a little fish fried to death
with a sprig of parsley over one eye.
You have to engage your dinner in its own mortality!
At the same time you must order what you want.
This fish (Ti LAH pee ah), from humble origins along 
the Nile, is popular in Israel but did not vault to stardom
until raised in earnest by Costa Ricans.
From exposure you will gain success or die.
Christ did both and this is the fish (my waiter’s word)
that He multiplied and thrust upon the multitudes.
A miracle that it should lie before me! A miracle
that if I remove the silver backing–courage!–
I am invited to partake of its tender core. And thus
tenderly do I love thee, little fish, even as I suffer
the death of my mother and the death of my father
and the death of all our days. I will rinse my mouth.
I will rise from this table and read meaning into the sea.
I will depart through that revolving door, which knows 
no beginning and has no end, and upon my reentry
into the burning thoroughfare, I will thread my way 
through the crowds, I will come upon a humble fruit stand,
where in your name and the name of thousands just like you,
I will ask for a lemon. This act, ounce for ounce, if executed
in perfect faith, will rip the cellophane off the world.