Musings from a BA Student

by Annabella Dlugi

Let me be an artist
And live in a little shack
On the shitty side of New York
Heck, not even New York—Staten Island.

Let me be an artist
Who walks home past the druggies
Selling crack and cracking up themselves
Sinking into the sidewalk like invisible sand.

I’ll be friends with the city’s rats
The ones who eat Whole Foods pizza
Like it’s their cocaine.
Even a tete-a-tete with a city rat
Is better than a day without art.

Let me be an artist
Let me do something
Be something
In this crack-jacked world
I’m just a measly scrap of receipt
Getting tracked along by some
City slicker’s shoe.

Let me talk in a lilting voice
About the avantgarde dancers
Of Manhattan
The ecofeminist graffiti
By the druggies’ favorite spot
Let me write a poem
About the woman who told me
“Fuck off” while buying my six dollar wine.

I will gladly be a rat
On the ferry from the island
As long as I can dart around
With an eye for beauty
And a tongue for a crumb
Of humanity.

Annabella Dlugi is a senior at Lawrence University studying English Literature. She loves all things art, especially theatre and music, and is fueled by obscene amounts of coffee, friends, and water walks.