For all the artists at Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City.
Your work is appreciated far more than you know.
An artist sits by an easel
at the local mall
sketching a charcoal face.
Her arm arcs gracefully
across the vanilla paper,
lathering on licorice strokes,
pausing only to glance
at her impatient customer,
who,
draped in paper bags
and buffeted by three small children,
struggles to maintain her composure
so that the artist
can smoothly capture
the roughness in her appearance.
Vishad Sukul, a chemistry and biology double-major at Rutgers-Newark, lives in Jersey City.
