The Figure of the Jew: I’m It
FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK FLAMINGO PARK
The Figure of the Jew: I’m It
Miriam Levine
Twilight when the sky’s translucent and my bench
calms me, with its stretch of green—this gust of wind!
It knocks back my hat. Why doesn’t her hat move?
Snowflake straw set on straw-colored hair.
Teacup Yorkies nipping at her feet.
As if my glance were a lasso, she steps close,
“The dogs are bound for the Kingdom Everlasting.”
And in my brain Tolstoy wakes.
All sentient beings have souls, he was sure.
Dearest Lev, Do you believe we’re all heaven bound?
Oy my too accommodating soul: if she’s like
Tolstoy, maybe she’s not out of her mind. Her voice
rises as the wind dies, “Have you heard the news?
Jesus hung on the cross and his blood dripped
down thirty-three feet and soaked the earth for us.”
Her certain blue eyes concentrate to deeper blue,
like powder heavier than water:
“The prophet of your people spoke.
Micah, the prophet of the Jews. It is written,
‘Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah,
yet out of thee shall He come forth . . . .’”
My head drops. Sussed out, Jew-head me.
The wind is up again. The dogs flatten their ears.
Her delicate untroubled hat doesn’t know where it is.
She says, “My mother died.”
“Was it this year?”
“She is in the Kingdom where there is no time.”
Time for me to go.
I’m on my feet with calm intention.
“I want to save you,” she says.
Presto chango. I’m gone. Homeward,
on the path under the palms
between Meridian and Michigan Streets,
I write a story in my head:
April it might have
been, years before the gospel,
merciful death takes his pain away forever,
and rain falls on Jerusalem,
on the Hill of Golgotha,
turning to mist on his hair, mingling with his blood.
And on my screen, which by pressing a key,
I may lighten or darken, from The Book of Micah:
“And the mountains shall melt under Him,
and the valleys shall split, as wax before fire, as
water poured down a steep place.”
Melting and pouring for me—still. The metaphors.
To Micah and the prophets before you,
the language is terrific—
“I will lament and wail; I will go mad
and be naked; I will make a wailing as
jackals, and mourning as ostriches”—
but what do you know
about the grief of dogs and birds?
O how often . . . the future tense
for things that may never happen.
In my dream I sat on a bare wooden chair
in a bare room without window or door.
Not a crack in the wall, hard yellow light
with no source.
I breathed yet could not breathe.
Stricken, alone, still.
“Madness in your dream.
In life you fight it,” a friend said.
Once deep in rage and sadness
I became something else.
Though I’m named for a prophet, I won’t prophesy
or turn soft and lambent for grief—not now.
If one line sings, I’m all right for seconds, a flake
before melting, a fool for words, juiced up.
I hear them run, stop, begin, run . . . .
and wander now, rootless. The tendril ripped loose.
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.