L-vis Lives!

Racemusic Poems

Kevin Coval

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781608461585
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía americana

FROM THE POET the Chicago Tribune calls "the new voice of Chicago, " comes L-vis Lives!, a bold new collection of poetry and prose exploring the collision of race, art, and appropriation in American culture.

L-vis is an imagined persona, a representation of artists who have used and misused Black music. Like so many others who gained fame and fortune from their sampling, L-vis is as much a sincere artist as he is a thief. In Kevin Coval's poems, L-vis' story is equal parts forgotten history, autobiography, and re-imaginings. We see shades of Elvis Presley, the Beastie Boys, and Eminem, and meet some of history's more obscure "whiteboy" heroes and anti-heroes: legendary breakdancers, political activists, and music impresarios.

A story of both artistic theft and radical invention, L-vis Lives! is a poetic novella on all of the possibilities and problems of "post-racial" American culture—where Black art is still at times only fully accepted in a white face, and every once in a while an "L-vis" comes along to step in to the void.

i am a hero
to most. the great hope
of something other.
a complex back-story.something other than
the business of my father.
bland's antonym.
jim crow's black sheep.
the forgotten son
left to rise in the darknessamong the dis
carded in the wild
of working class, single
mother hoods. a hero
who transcends
who translates the dis
satisfactions of the plains;
kids of kurt cobain,
method man amphetamine,
the odd Iowan who digs dirt
and lights beyond the pig yard,
spits nebraskan argot,
hero to the heart
land, middle brow(n) america

death side

L-vis is discovered

@ the museum of contemporary art.
the big show/casing hip-hop acts
from all over the city. venues like this
never put on local talent but tonight
doors at 7, show at 8. by 6:30
300 people standin outside.

everyone n they cousin came
w/ demos. ladies went shopping
on Madison for outfits. girls w/ hair
like ropes n roots got they nails did.
so many tims on the corner cd’ve been
a boot camp click reunion. dreds n white girls
reeked of musk and music seeped out
the museum’s closed doors like dank
spreading till everyone got whiff
and the sidewalk became soul train.

a night like this seems like a movie
everything worked: folks flirtin, jokes
fit into conversation like new socks
glide into all-white kicks. history
will be written tonight. air
so clear—it’s camera ready.

nerve

He never seems sure of the proper accent to adopt
AllMusic Guide’s review of Vanilla Ice’s To the Extreme

knees knocked so loud the first row thought a clave
was added to the band. sweat drips thick like old honey.
dry heaves side stage near the curtain, a couple of hawks
into the tin before my name announced. it sounds foreign
at this point, something distant. then a rush under lights
a gallery of unknown faces glare, they have paid to be here.
they have decided on this night to be nowhere else
but in front of me . . . listen (please):
i will sing my songs.
i am doing what i love.
it is not my own invention
perhaps it will be
at the Grand Ole Opry
but i really want Black
audiences to feel me
cuz i am making Black
art, and am not. i am
something new and am not.
i am authentic and not.
all this every time i gyrate
in front of metal and electric
carries my voice thru the air
like murmur or murder.
this is my real voice and not.
i am fresh and tired and many
may never know the difference.
i think this is what i really
sound like, alone, the voice
that emerges in the solace
of pen. i write these songs
then stand here swaying,
my real/borrowed voice
singing. i think

the cash register in Dr. Dre’s head goes bling

I thought he would be able to get away
with saying a lot more than I would . . .
Dr. Dre

jimmy iovine pressed play in his beverly hills garage

and the tornado sirens moaned

in the trees, lightbulbs exploded into handclap casio synths
fuck you pay me mantras, twisting knobs in front of the soundboard.

Dre flew the kid on the tape from Detroit to LA two days later.

this is the fox of history smiling in the chicken coup
the Nile rushing north, cows butchering the butcher
wade in the water on YO! mtv raps, opposite day, the faint
hum of reparations massaged out worn hands in the field. it struck
him clear as lightning. he is no ben franklin, but this is just
what the doctor ordered.

robert van winkle has some
tough decisions to make

there were two deals on the table.

Chuck D wanted to sign him¹
have the Bombsquad work
production. if there was gonna be
a rap L-vis, he’d like to get paid
have a hand in the molding
this time.

and there was capitol records
and their million dollar signing bonus.
and Robert’s foreign two-seat junker
at the mechanic. he’d never seen
that much negative space before
in the bellies of all those zeros

the mouths of six ghosts
macaulay culkin, frozen, alone.

¹ (i know, i couldn’t believe that shit either)

the beastie boys cast a video
for paul’s boutique

cabernet bottles, ounces of herb, mounds of cash
line the conference table, three upper east side boys

wear afro-wigs, inebriated grins. a fledging punk
band turned hip-hop by the downtown eighties and Fab 5 Freddy.

signed to capitol records, grown men, money to burn, casting
the hey ladies video at a los angeles hotel. coddled by television

they loved Rudy Ray Moore’s bug eyes, watermelon, chicken bones
mercedes hood ornaments above their crib. silver blunts in their mouths.

near the Pacific today, a line of bikinis around a door, down the hall, flesh
paraded at auction for the boys who are beastly. for the boys behind

a conference table in afro-wigs. whiteboys in afros’ wigs. they are not Black.
the joke is they are not Black.

L-vis is dating Jezebel

a dancer at his video shoot
brought her to his trailer
where a guitar lay

Miz Jaquanda

he called her
strumming roots
music, even sang Negro

spirituals.

he’ll take her
to the good restaurant
in the hood.

he’ll explore Black
sound, deep reverb
in those hips she swings.

he’ll swipe her smile.
she’ll braid his hair.

he’ll speak of her potential.
she’ll tell him he’s stupid

dope.

he’ll bastard her patois
n ease through doorways.
he’ll ask her on tour, to award shows.

she’ll dress in designer lingerie, tabloids
taboo, matching tattoos, an opening
to escape the prison of Jet Magazine

Matando Güeros

L-vis visits the classroom

is Bitron’s favorite death / metal group / he is a hulk
of a kid / chipped black fingernails / orange streaks in brown hair hang
at his waist a metal spiked dog collar / circles
his neck / but sweet his voice stuttering to find words

he’s presenting what he’s been thinking about / his family / the...