She was bad
A cool bad
All third graders wanted bad like hers
I'd wait on line just to say Hi lunch lady Jackie
Her sass a dash of iodized smiles
Like salt and hash to my bland ass ham sandwich
Tall, strong, witty
Epic ebony
Tupac's tattooed Nefertiti
Immortally pretty, lunchroom celebrity
My favorite lunch lady Jackie
She was bad two years later when i saw
She made an island of a street corner
Face frozen, blind to me watching her
Twitching and begging, addiction napalmed
My ten year old eyes
The cafeteria window faced the school's giant
Crack is Wack sign
It was monumentally orange
A mural on a twenty-foot concrete slab like
A tombstone where we played handball in the
Playground outside the lunchroom
At nightfall fiends morphed, made a restaurant
Of our handball court. Syringes like forks
They dined until they starved, left empty
Vials in our park
I once waited outside
Just to say hi