On Zarker Street

Zarker Street was treeless, front porches of houses reaching the sidewalk, not a square inch of grass to welcome even a weed. The polio ambulance, like a a hungry animal, idled In front of Ronnie Dasher’s house, his brother being carted to the curb, bound for an iron lung. All the kids, having run inside, watched from behind the windows. “Mama, mama will I die? I talked to him last week.” How do you get away, get away? In Miss Laken’s voice studio at the corner of Twentieth, a soprano student yearns to reach the higher branches of a more capacious garden.