Elaine Terranova
POLIO
There was this disease out gobbling up the children.
It grabbed us around the chest, beat at our limbs with
mangling wings
so bad our parents tried to snatch us back as if we were in
the path of buses
which meant no swimming pools no merry-go-round in Hunting
Park, or play with other children who might be carriers
only the tin tub on the front porch
echoing with water.
Elaine Terranova is the author of four books of poetry and
one chapbook, including The Cult of the Right Hand, which
won the Walt Whitman Award, and he latest book, Not To.
Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The
American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. He
awards include a Pew Fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts. |