Student spotlight: a poem by Sarah Ip
Chug-a-lug
Throughout August, BU Today will publish pieces of student scholarship and creative work. Sarah Ip’s (COM ’09) poetry has been featured in numerous publications, including Arena Magazine, Iliad Press, League of American Poets, Voicesnet.com and Poetry.com. She is a proponent of the advancement of Asian-Americans in the arts, media and public sector. She has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity Katrina aid relief and served as an artist for the China Care Fund exhibition. Currently, Sarah will be entering her sophomore year this fall at Boston University. She is co-vice coordinator of the Boston chapter of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) and freshman coordinator of Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF). The poem here originally appeared in the first issue of Burn Magazine, which can be found throughout the campus. The editors can be contacted at burnmagazine@gmail.com.
Chug-a-lug
So I’ll sing myself to sweet bliss
Pop the cork and chug-a-lug
Down…
Where you missed a spot
Down…
Where you’ve crushed a block
Chiseled into cherubs
Without the glow of God
Where did you come from
Stained with ocher run amok
And I, I struggle to breathe
Beneath the capsized titan
Of your subterranean immersion
Queued awake sinking lividly
Be thou my Savior
Even now, amidst the quake
A doubting heart, capsizing clout
Tensing toward your rushing streams
"Don’t go chasing waterfalls"
But if we never tried
We’d just be another Jackie or Jet until
The fiftieth century
And we can’t act, can’t sing, can’t
Even smile without a crooked lisp
Spouting out spoonfuls of horrendous English
A loyal Poo-Poo Poodle to be petted
Rewarded with a treat
For being good, well stuff it —
I won’t willingly chain myself
To that limited fate
Where the foreign students gets
To be the joke of the day
Oh will you have a slice of buttered racist bread
With that, dear sir
Would you like another helping of pretentious
Designer stew
Or perhaps you’d enjoy iced backstabbing cream
With a closed-off, condescending cherry
To top it all off
For wearing his tie wrong
For singing a weird song
For spewing a strange tongue
As he awkwardly bobs his overdue haircut head