Zing

FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK FLAMINGO PARK

Zing

Miriam Levine

A potato is a spud because a spud is a spade for

digging potatoes, which some call “bog

oranges.” The Brits love to zing digs at the Irish,

“potato niggers,” they call them. Some say a “mick”

is a “frotch,” from “fire crotch,” meaning depravity

and red-haired privates. When a kid called me

a “kike,” I wish I’d heard kite. Kite is a bird.

In Arabic, an airplane of paper. Some say

a Black man’s a “spade.” Spade’s a spud and the black suit

in cards. If you turn a spud upside down, it’s a heart.

There was a young Black man in Flamingo Park

singing rap, niggahs shiver, niggahs shiver.

I’m a kike with a heart to dig it.

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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.