Too Close
FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK FLAMINGO PARK
Too Close
Miriam Levine
Fingers stained from picking berries,
mouth so inky blue, my grandson
puts his head in my lap and shuts
his caramel brown eyes—how violet
the lids, how black and thick the lashes.
From moist lungs close to his heart,
from blood-tinged sacs, from the quick,
from the windpipe ringed with cartilage,
his breath puffs against my hovering
hand—too close, too moist! I float
my hand away as if he were telling
an intimate secret. “I’m tired,” he sighs.
His young body’s innocent of sperm,
but someday there will be a lover who
does not pull away from his living breath.
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.