School Lunch

by Alan Balter
(Northbrook, IL)

School Lunch

Every day at lunch I mingled with bacteria
Nasty bugs that lurked in the school cafeteria
Other kids in line often caused a long wait
Each of us preparing for disaster on a plate

Mondays brought cold pizza, every kid’s first wish
Ours was like a moldy pie, poison on a dish
Two or three slices, plenty, if you’re willin’
To wash them right on down with a dose of penicillin

Tuesdays it was meat loaf topped with something brown
Once I took some home, and Rover turned it down
What kind of meat it was really didn’t matter
Spam with lumpy gravy or cat food on a platter

Wednesdays was spaghetti day with a green meatball
Hard enough to puncture brick like a cannon ball
Served up kind of sloppy, a disgusting casserole
Bad for us to eat, like upset stomach in a bowl

Thursdays brought fried chicken, the worst of all thus far
Grease enough to lubricate a rusty foreign car
Tough and stringy in your mouth like chewing on shoe leather
Down it all and what was left was a giant feather

Fridays it was fish of course, salmon I’m afraid
Fresh out of the freezer case after a decade
Leftover mashed potatoes never went to waste
We took ‘em back to Art class when teacher needed paste

Now twenty years later, my clothes are very tight
From eating gourmet food most every single night
Forty pounds is hard to lose as a general rule
So I’ve arranged for carry outs from my high school