Congratulations to Nadrah Mohammed, CAS '13, winner of the NYU Creative Writing Program’s 2012 Gallery Prize competition, runner-up Jaime Mishkin, CAS '15, and runner-up Aaron Marks, CAS '13. The Prizes were awarded for the best poem or short prose piece written by an NYU undergraduate in response to the exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, which is on view at the Grey Art Gallery from January 15 to April 6, 2012. Contest judge and Clinical Professor of the Creative Writing Program Chuck Wachtel introduced the finalists for the reading in the gallery on Wednesday, March 6.
"Open"
Allen Ginsberg’s window
is full of snow and leaves.
His window, criss-crossed
by power lines, kissed
by asphalt, tells of a breakfast nook
of oranges and milk
and a sleeping cat. It’s domestic,
benign. His window is infused
with a tenderness
of lips. Of a mouth,
opening to speak. His window
is dirty cold city mornings, where you appear
on the street, dazed. You appear in the street,
exposed, backpack filled with photographs,
grotesqueries, things covered
in your own writing. On the street,
you can never remember inside. Something
about both places is never palpable
in the same moment. Within and without,
snow is different. Maybe Allen
drank cold coffee and pressed his palm
to the cold glass, and heard
someone come into the kitchen,
behind him. Maybe he held it
in his hands – the snow, the leaves,
the dirty cold city morning. Maybe he felt
the air move, imperceptibly.
--Written by Nadrah Mohammed, CAS '13