Let’s Go

FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK FLAMINGO PARK

Let’s Go

Miriam Levine

There’s no sacred music that forbids us to dance,

not Fauré’s Requiem—Pie Jesu,

Agnus Dei, Libera me, In Paradisum;

Bach’s Cantata, Wake Up. Plié or whatever.

“Let’s go children, don’t you want to go

children, meet all your fine friends

at the Dew Drop Inn. Mama set the marks,

papa set the beat, mojo working when they do

the boogie-woogie like we used to do . . . .”

“Shuffle off to Buffalo,” the halt and the lame.

Drag-ass me, I hear sore-knee Sappho sing.

Isn’t that some sorry relief for the grievously wounded?

When dance is impossible, there may be

moves in the brain, though the limbs are not listening.

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Flamingo Park
Miriam Levine
2026

Flamingo Park is Miriam Levine’s gift to you. The setting of this online chapbook is the Flamingo Park neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida. The themes, for the most part, are love, death, joy—laughter and tears—the longstanding themes of lyric poetry.