Poem: Observance

The folded wax paper cylinder
of salt accompanying my hard-boiled egg
and hard cardboard bookends of matzoh,
lavishly buttered.

                      I am allowed
to buy the same juice others use
to wash down bunned frankfurters and beans,
a side of applesauce. Smell of the forbidden
rising with Chlorox and tepid cooking water
from the steam tables of the lunchroom
as I bend over Passover lunch, the sanctioned food
that’s sent with me, in my exile in high school.

Elaine Terranova’s sixth book of poems, “Dollhouse,” won the 2012 Off the Grid Press poetry book award. She is a recipient of the Walt Whitman Award and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for a poem on the Jewish Experience.