Kevin Coval

all the pharaohs must fall

2011-02-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

Mohamed Bouazizi didn’t have a permit to sell fruit
didn’t have government permission to earn a living
to live.
the police took his fruit and slapped his face
he went to the governor’s office. they refused to see him
he poured paint thinner on his body
and lit the match

all the pharaohs must fall

we needed inspiration, to be awakened
in our bodies, our lives made present
here we are
the world is not right, just or fair
the most have the least
the least have the most

all the pharaohs must fall

all the kings of jordan
all the queens of england
all the bridges crumbling
dictators like dominos
israel is a pharaoh
and must fall. all the leaders
with colonial control
who ransack resources
in Africa, who steal
lives in east oakland
who protect jon burge

all the pharaohs must fall

all the pharaohs who reign
over fruitsellers and farmers
the world over
the world is over

all the pharaohs must fall

the tycoons and filthy rich
heads of state on the chopping block
chairmen ousted from their seats.
there are many ways to do this
the giant is waking, it is the body
of the people who have little
to fall back on. no doctor or bank
account. the people who hand to mouth
who check to check. all this
scrounging kept us occupied.
all the gathering of crumbs
left us looking at the ground
but the bodies ablaze have given
us literal whitman’s, at wits end
they sing the body electrocuted
incinerated, sparks to wake us in the war machine
wake us in the mineshaft stuffing richmen’s pockets
wake us in our second job, our second mortgage, our second marriage
wake us in the routinized mechanics of our own labor
wake us cleaning gold toilet bowls, searing foie gras
all security guards, fast food line cooks and cashiers
all barbers and teachers, basket weavers and tea makers
all field hands and construction workers
all women with needles and men with hammers
all bodies who drive or lift, who sweep or cook
every body who takes away, who takes orders
every body whose body needs a break or bus pass
who needs an eye exam or job or a better job
every body whose body is uninsured, under fed
unaccounted for by governments and corporations
who bureaucratize their love

wake in this new day
look around
neighbors are allies
we don’t have to compete with
we can ally and fight with them
there are more of us
who don’t drill or bomb or legislate
more of us who 3rd shift and wash dishes
more of us who forge papers and sneak over fences
more of us worried about unlawful arrests
and whose worry arrests in the night without sleep

wake in this new day
we will all die soon
let us live while we have the chance
while we have this day
to build and plot and devise
to create and make the world
just
this time for us
this time for all
this time the pharaohs must fall

if you were not, here (an elegy for Dr. Margaret Burroughs)

2010-11-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

if you did not etch metal into black ink and Black bodies
if you did not travel to learn with the Mexican muralists
if you and Charlie did not think African history important
enough to re/member and re/present in Black light:
Black thought, Black ideas held in Black minds
in Black brains
if you did not build an institution in your house and basement
if you did not have a door Don L. Lee could come to cuz he needed someone
to talk with who would overstand
if you were not here, Black arts wouldn’t have been
mothered in this city like it was.
the wall of respect wdn’t of risen and burned
in the imagination of the Southside
if you were not here, no Afri-Cobra
no South Side Community Arts Center
no institutions, no memory and image
of the Black body by Black bodies
for Black bodies
if you were not here, no honest portrayal of Beauty
nothing authentic, no celebration
of African forms
if you and Gwendolyn Brooks were not
classmates and sisters
building
no OBAC
no Carolyn Rodgers
no Angela Jackson
no Walter Bradford
if you were not here, no Black language
no Black poetic, no ritual of song
in this segregated Chicago

the lineage is you
and Gwendolyn
and Haki
and hip-hop
ALL
pro-Black centered words
which is to say true
words for once that stay
telling it how it is.
ALL the voices needed
you nurtured them

if you were not here, ALL those words and images
ALL those pro-human Black centered songs
of working and justice, celebrating the body’s
survival, ALL the poets you mother tongued
ALL the painters hands you poured kool-aid
colors in

if you were not here, generations of american artists would not be either
you rescued us from english classes
you pulled our ties off in cubicles and administrative posts
and took some off the block, posted on the corner
you told us to dream and imagine and build
our legacies on the shoulders of who came before
you made us believe Art is a language the people need
you saved us from the civil war in ourselves, this city, this country
you always lived among the people
Bronzeville whirling and warping by your doorstep
you are so Chicago, that way
a mess of family and pigeons
a house full of gems and germs
you were always doing your job
getting our minds right
telling the next generation (and the generation after and after that)
to be about something, this is what you left
and you left so much
and you will always be here
and you will always be
in a purple kaftan and headdress
with wild acid nikes and no socks on
cuz you stayed fresh like that
and you left Us the desire to be fresh
to make and tell
and re/tell
and re/make
and re/main
and re/member
and re/present
always
here, you are
a huge heart of the story
and in order to re/member ourselves
we must speak
your name

11/22/2010

what will i tell my jewish kids (for the 5771)

2010-09-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

what will i tell my jewish kids
after Dr. Margaret Burroughs

who may not really know they are.
whose parents eat BLTs in the country
club and practice capitalism on the Sabbath.
whose suburb began voting conservative
in the generation after civil rights
whose great-grand father survived the shoah
and whose grandfather suffers Islamophobia.

what will i say to my little nieces and nephews
who celebrate christ’s mass, who hunt for easter
eggs, who like mel gibson movies, who adore
the white wash and wonder bread on pesach.
what will i tell my little homies who run out of gym
class asking why their cocks are cut, what will i say
when the girls noses grow, hair frizzes, hips widen
when they don’t look a damn thing like barbie.

what do i tell the bar-mitzvah boys who end up studying
man’s law before G-d’s. what will they understand
of pigeonholes in a pidgin their tongue has no taste for.
i will them: we are middle men, liminal women, go betweens
seams in babylon, alephs holding the sky and earth
together, synthesizers of the sacred and profane

we are bankers. pagans and christians thought it devils work
and we wanted to survive, so we are hustlers, pawn brokers
slumlords. the white folk who lived near Black folk. of course
we got into the music business, the exploitation. we love
the blues, the melancholy melodies remind us of our own
Chazzan. our own sorrow and diaspora. we George Gershwin-ed.
we blackened up. we wronged our neighbors. we connect a country
on the always brink of civil war.

we are a bridge people. red sea parters. translators
between the warring. we see connections. the i in i
the i in thou. Buber taught us that or was it Haile Selassie
or Freud. and what was it Marx demanded, we live as Moses
bent and davening toward justice. a radical equity where everything is
sacred or nothing is. Einstein to unify the chaos.
Emma Goldman to arrange the pieces.

i will certainly tell my jewish kids
of Goodman and Schwerner who died
with their brother James Earl Chaney.
that for a time, we were freedom riders
along with others, we were central
in the movement. hated jim crow
ourselves, for a time in this country
we were the Others, now we are other
than our selves.

i will tell my jewish kids
we have long story. more than what is seen
now. we are a people who wander and wonder
who have a bag prepared in the corner. i will
tell them israel is not a jewish state. it is
an empire state, a state against people
and a state against G-d. a G-d that is
borderless and nationless, a G-d that is
certainly without drone missiles and air
raids. in a jewish state no tank stands
between people seeking water or medicine.
israel is a farce, the guilt of the western world.
a christian admission of the holocaust.
a watchdog over oil. a stepchild power mad.
a baby country raging against everything
i know to be jewish. i will tell them, help dis-
mantle israel. Zion is yet to be, it is in the struggle
of becoming. this is the truth. it will venerate us
it will exodus, the truth will set us, free!

Falling Up: A Call to Arms (RIP Sole UAC)

2010-03-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Falling Up: A Call to Arms
(RIP Sole UAC)

the factory he was painting on
used to manufacture paint. tomb
stone for the industrial age near
the stevenson express way, along
the south branch of the Chicago river.

Pilsen, Little Village, used to be
Back of the Yards, giant butcher
in the center of the country.

cops gave chase in an abandoned building.
whose interests were they serving. the city
didn’t protect the bodies working
while the factory smoked.

the building is a heap of grey rot.

graffiti artists tribute the hands
that sealed paint cans. conjurers
bringing life back.

graffiti writers are superheroes
who astound and scale the possible,
who defy gravity, who commemorate
and communicate in secret codes.

graffiti writers are the recorders
of a city rotting. painters of walls,
resisters of death and dying industry.

graffiti writers Upton Sinclair,
journalists investigating the g-d-
forsaken with aerosol.

graffiti writers can’t fly.

when Sole jumped off the roof
of the empty building, he thought
he could swim, maybe thought
the river would break his fall
and it did
break him
maybe.
or maybe
the ghosts of the river
held him there. great leviathans
disporting themselves in the depths *
of bubbly creek. there is
no oxygen in the water.
bloodworms feast on sunken
organs buried in the riverbed,
corpses slaughtered in the stockyard
decomposing for decades, entrails
and industry, the hands of workers
pushed out of job and home.

Sole choose to be free
Under A Crown, United Artists,
Crew of the working. he was
twenty-six, a year into marriage,
recently laid off. a city worker
remembering the left out, the margins
and maimed, the garnished wages
and real income of regular people,
in this city on a lake, plummeting
like stone off a roof top, a body
from the heavens, Sole falling
in the Chicago River
where workers and remnants
of slaughter disturb the water
bubble up, and sometimes
catch fire and burn.

* Upton Sinclair (1906). The Jungle. Chapter 9.

The Wall: 20 years after Berlin

2009-11-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

The night of Nov. 9... was the fulfillment of a dream. German Chancellor Angela Merkel

today concrete stretches into sky,
twenty-six feet high. drab slabs
cut into four hundred and thirty-six
miles of country. dominos to block
the sun. an accordion of cement,
strung like a clothes line, wheezing
a deep, lone note.

today in al-Ma’sara children
grab barbwire with bare hands. march
toward a wall soldiers protect with guns.
soldiers push the children back,
bloody their hands on barbwire.

today armed men push children in the holy land.

today in Berlin, people celebrate.
politicians give speeches. the east and west
battle to tell the story in the light
that most suits them. regardless
how it is spun, people demanded
the wall fall.

twenty years later, more walls.
nations erect walls to keep people out.
walls are static, ugly and stupid.
people are resilient, fluid and numerous.
people break walls.

The Court in The Hague said the wall
is illegal. the wall is Israel’s myopia.
america’s revisionism. the wall bulldozes
hundreds of Palestinian homes
in a shrinking, stolen land.

today in Qalandiya, protestors
tore one slat of wall down,
twenty years to the day the wall
in Berlin fell.

today Palestinians wear neon yellow
shirts, black block letters across their chest
read, JERUSALEM, WE ARE COMING.
coming thru jidar al fasal al unsari!
coming thru the wall of apartheid!
coming to the city of peace!
as long as the wall exists
the city will have no name!
sons and daughters of the city
coming to reclaim the name!

walls fall like dominos.
the earth moves and people
demand the freedom to move
as the earth does; the freedom
to see cousins, to buy olives,
to visit hospitals. walls fall
or get ripped down or knocked
over. people walk thru walls
like superheroes.

today the state of Israel builds a wall.
today a piece of the wall was toppled down.
today the people of Palestine and today the people
everywhere dream of peace, dream no walls,
dream of the day the wall will
come down, piece by piece.

Searching for a Minyan: Israel, McCarthyism, & the Struggle for Real Dialogue

2009-10-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

Our Response to being Censored by J Street
by Kevin Coval and Josh Healey

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure a multiplicity of voices are heard: and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.

This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh’s poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street’s Obama. Again, this is not surprising.

What is disappointing, and troubling, is J Street’s response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say “I know what I’m doing is wrong...but there are some battles we choose not to fight,” before canceling our program, and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and he resigned last month, the radical Right hasn’t stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The Right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the Left doesn’t. And that’s why we often lose – on health care, on global warming, and on Israel/Palestine.

For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they’d rather not have him. Today, Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone’s oppression.

One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, “when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions”. Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc....)

But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians’ right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January over 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilian, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.

There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.

Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America’s support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one’s worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a chosen people and the acting out of geostrategic nightmares via military might.

Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem’s sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

So, we are searching for a minyan—a crew of progressives and progressive Jews to build and connect with. We want to have a conversation. Not wait for the conversation to be dictated and have borders and walls built around acceptable topics, but to have a conversation determined by us, Jews That Are Left, that are on the Left. A conversation that is honest and open and genuinely reclaims and considers our progressive past as well as forges the future world. A conversation engaged in the work of tikkun olam for real, the work of repair and healing and wholeness.

Progressive American Jews where you at? Holla at us! For real: jewsthatareleft@gmail.com. Let’s reshape the conversation. Let’s build a minyan, a coalition of progressive Jews and gentiles who want what is just and right for ALL people and all people in Israel and Palestine.

go to: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1122325.html
for an interview Josh did with Haaretz

Eulogy for J Def

2009-10-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

This is a poem dedicated to a student that I worked with who was murdered last spring. The event where the poem was presented was a peace and unity rally sponsored by the city of Chicago.

Kevin Coval On Chicago Public Radio

2009-07-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Burning Books, A Bebelplatz in Jerusalem

2009-06-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

peace. i invite and hope for conversation with poems i write. this about a real event that happened last month
that sounds like orwellian fiction, but is true and tragic and unacceptable. it is 2009. writers, artists, and all who believe in democracy must consider the current and historic practices of the of state of israel. i offer a reflection.

Reflection on The Israeli Army shutting down The Palestine Festival of Literature
in the month of May in 2009: Burning Books, A Bebelplatz in Jerusalem

Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.
Heinrich Heine

jews love books.
we dress them up
in crowns and gold
breast plates. fine
paper, our finest
calligraphy. our books
live in an ark lit by a flame
that always burns, a metaphor
for a G-d, we don’t have
vowels for.

if we carry nothing
else into Diaspora, we carry
these stories, these scrolls
that unroll a history we revere
and parade thru aisles
on the highest of holy days.
we kiss the corner of tallis
to our lips, put cloth to text
to praise words Moses brought
off the mount, our ancestors
lugged thru the desert. stories
told and told again at a kitchen
table some where, the 5th and 15th
time we heard them bored out
our seder mind, but the 50th
and 502nd time something stuck
so we wrote them down
in our most reverent hand style
in the blackest of ink on bone
parchment. we record the trials
and rivals and lineage and heroes
of our families cuz we love books
mourn all the storied bodies
burned by the those who hate books
with messy endings. we love books
cuz books are bodies of stories
and stories make history
and we are a people who believe
in the stories of people to tell history
and mourn all the bodies and stories
burned before they are recorded
in the Eternal book, authored
by the voiceless and Voweless.

but it is 2009/5769

& this spring Israeli troops shut down The Palestine Festival of Literature
behind barrels of guns. they stormed into a theater where poets were reading poems
& demanded silence behind triggers where bullets scream & governments check point
& knessets approve military bombardments & schools bombed & burned on ground they are meant to be on fire from words & ideas, not metal.

in the name of a jewish state
Israeli educated young men aimed guns in the faces of women
reading poems. in the name of a jewish state stories silence forever.

which raises the question(s):
who are we because of empire? what democracy are we scared of?
how can we deny the right to sing, to chazzan a Palestinian song?

mad men bring books to the bond fire.
power mad men bring bodies.

our books been banned & burned & bordered, bodies into boxes
& camps cuz they demand memory, insist our presence in the story
of the world & books are memory of never forgetting & people house books
in their stories & stories should never be crushed by missiles. books record the day
& days in exile & days that should not have been recorded. the horrors & the horrible. the record of families spilt & broken & bastards forever. books are records that never forget & preserve & serve memory & history when militarized revisers deny events
as lived by the natives. the records prove otherwise, proof of existence & empires
want proof of purchase & per chance & pursue silencing stories that make them look criminal in the honest of day & moon of night.

records are stories, a people
hold dear. who knows this
more than us?
all us wandering immigrants
all us seekers of safe land
all us unfettered poets of wind
all us literate builders of pidgins
all us inventors with scraps
all us people of the book

though we don’t seem to know anything
anymore except the havoc
reaped on our bodies in exile, the learned
behavior of executioners we internalize
the bureaucracies & boots & lines of refugees
we terrorize. gather families into open air
prisons & worse. we bury bodies in graves
of steel. bodies who house forests of stories.
the sad song of our own malignancy untold.
where is the ark in the center of the congregation
the ark in the center of the city of peace filled
with bodies of stories, records stacked
unsequestered & unsilenced.

it is mad men who burn books
& bodies & hold poets at gun point

this the work of emperors & empires
furors & fascists. scared colonists
insane to control what no state could
the record of people living
despite the state’s efforts
to have them not.

2009-06-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Purple Rain Beat Downs

2009-06-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Purple Rain Beat Downs

bart friedman and i loved Prince. in 3rd grade after school, mom not home till dinner, we’d barricade ourselves in the bedroom i shared with my brother; a red metal bunk bed, sheets white with red and blue geometric shapes that made the room look like a homework help show on PBS.

Purple Rain

flipped a-side to b-side. back and forth in a yellow boom box. buttons big as toys
kids on the small bus would get at recess.

we’d listen

bart and i, until my brother bothered us and we’d beat his ass with noogies, wedgies
(back, frontal and flying), iron claws the Von Erich’s taught us in Texas League Wrestling typewriters— a knee on each arm, eric’s back flat on the carpet, banging his chest like an arcade keyboard, dinging his head to typeset the next line of red marks along his sternum— titty-twisters so raw one time he bled and i got grounded and had to do eric’s half of the chores for a week
cuz he was such a wuss.

but before the interruption

bart and i would sync our pelvises to the Revolution’s baseline, whirling like we knew how
to use them. i’d be front man, royalty, mouthing in the mirror, a vacuum extension,
my microphone. bart whaled air guitar solos, before we knew what lace and lesbian sounded like. back to back, an isometric bridge, supporting each other’s weight. red-violet lights swirling
in the discoball-townhome-live-video-concert of our minds.

Posing

2009-05-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Posing

in a full length mirror
on the sliding closet door
of the bedroom i share
with my brother, in the town-
home my mother rents
in the suburbs, an X-
cap tilts / over my shaved head
like an unplayable pinball machine.
nose still too big for my face.
chin hairs, i’d call a go-tee
struggle for articulation.

i look hard

i am shirtless
in a Raiders Starter
jacket, belt strung thru loops
of 38/34 jeans, pools of denim
wade at my Tim-less ankles.

every muscle in my body
wishes it were Bigger.

my first

2009-05-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

my first

i usually tell people it was Kool Moe Dee’s Knowlege is King or
skip that question and talk about my first mix tape, a KRS-ONE, BDP
mega mix, or my first cassette, RUN DMC’s King of Rock or LL’s Radio.

but my brother won’t let me forget, The Jets. you found out, i got a crush on you.
they were poppy like a bagel, poofy like magic and pink neon, perhaps
referenced west side story, maybe Latino, George Lopez was in the crew
i think, but definitely wore shoulder pads, for sure all 6-8 members tanned
too much under a plastic sun and they all permed their hair, and maybe
they were Latinos or at least played them on the covers of cds, like Natalie Wood
born Zakharenko to Russian immigrants, so i guess they did reference Westside Story

but The Jets were for sure my first CD.
i didn’t even buy the Kool Moe Dee. Matt Wenska gave it to me at my 15th birthday party, a surprise my moms threw for me at my father’s restaurant, even though they were 8 years divorced, she wanted to make him pay for the food. and i had to wait another 6 months to listen till i got a CD player, but The Jets was the 1st cd i bought
for sure, at Record City in the Strip Mall near Fluky’s Hot Dogs and Quick Cuts.

The Jets were a family band from Minneapolis,
who performed The Star-Spangled Banner
at the seventh game of the 1987 World Series,
their parents were from the South Pacific
island of Tonga, they are loved by mormons

but i knew none of that at fourteen in the late eighties.
The Jets were summer bubble gum stuck in my walkman, and i’d listen
laying out on a sticky plastic chaise lounge, my moms blue eye covers
on the bridge of my nose, lost in headphones and the thought of Megan
Mathy’s breasts, relaxing till i had to go to work in the restaurant and take orders
from my dad and the manager and whole families sharing a meal, but before that
i’d lather my body in chemical coconut oil, a slurpy cup of ice cubes and kool aid
in the backyard, falling in love with synth and computer hand claps, working hard
on my tan, trying to be as dark
as i can.

call and (tepid) response

2009-05-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

call and (tepid) response

in my mother’s kitchen over a bowl of frosted flakes
it clicked. something i’d been contemplating for weeks.
i called Marc Cohen immediately and told him
he should run for class president.
i would be his campaign manager
and introduce him to the eight-grade student body
by kicking a rhyme.

it was 1988, rap had yet to hit the shopping mall.
Marc was skeptical, but every night of the campaign week
i worked on writing and more importantly how my mouth looked
in the mirror when words came out.

by thrusdsay night i was a minute and fifteen seconds
of mostly Grandmaster Melle Mel mimic at the end
of Beat Street, his eponymous elegy for Ramon (rough!)

but in the early hours of that friday morning
when birds kicked a symphony in the trees near
my window in the sub-division of Pheasant Creek,
i thought the end needed something more, something
to move the crowd of thirteen and fourteen year old
North Shore, majority Jewish assimilated, upper income kids
who liked wham and def lepard. i dug into my growing crates
of memorized bits and ah-ha-ed when the b-side of The Fresh Prince
and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s, He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, tape popped
into my head like a toaster pastry.

the morning was pre-AIDS Magic
showtime in the all-purpose room
a cafeteria with a stage, hundreds
of chairs facing the podium. giggles
and whispers whipped the air like crickets
until Mr. Feely, the industrial arts teacher
and 8th grade class advisor unfortunately
named considering the rumors about his wood
shop after school, introduced the candidates.

each contender was set to address the polity.
Marc was in the middle, like Monie Love,
but before he took the mic, i entered stage left
commanded the crowd clap their hands to a beat
which didn’t exist, but all the emcees started that way
and it’s true, white people are like a bootleg rolex
we can’t keep time, but i rode the jagged rhythm,
four-fifthed my way through the written verse
monosyllabic heroic couplets regaling the virtues
of Marc Cohen: the funny kid i’ve know since grade three
we wrestled at my house / he rolled in my dog’s pee
but we got older / got tough, got bolder / got to be Jr. High residents
make some noise for your next class president (ha!)

admittedly the crowd kept quite.

but you don’t stop the body rock
and i didn’t have enough good sense
to exit. i wanted to make Wood Oaks Jr. High
bounce to this, take all our mid-puberty
bon jovi loving energy and make the roof fire
or at least spark a bit, or kindle, a modest bbq
perhaps. i wanted the cafeteria transformed
into church, at least what i thought church
might feel like, a church in Wheaton maybe,
but still not bad for a room full of Jews.

undeterred i went into my appropriated call
and response: ladies all the ladies, all the ladies
in the house say Marc... say Marc... homeboys
make some noise let me hear you say Cohen...
say Marc Cohen... everybody, Marc Cohen rocks
the spot, let me hear it... say Marc Cohen rocks
the spot... a little louder Marc Cohen rocks
the spot... now scream... yeah, now scream...

and in reality a few friends perhaps
raised there voice over whisper, but
in my head i was baptized, a head,
ready and able to move the crowd.

POETS 4 TROY DAVIS

2009-05-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

Date:
Monday, May 18, 2009
Time:
7:30pm - 10:00pm
Location:
Simone's Bar (21+)
Street:
960 W. 18th St. (between Sangamon and Morgan)
City/Town:
Chicago, IL

King of Pop

2009-05-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

King of Pop

on the first day of fourth grade
i realized i liked girls
or at least Kim Kaufman.

i’d been watching Dynasty.
Kim reminded me of a ten year old
Alexis Colby, a dark and brooding
pretty young thing
her attention mine
to capture.

on the second day of forth grade
i returned fresh-dipped
in my Venture-copped, pleather
Michael Jackson Thriller jacket.
it’s red, a corvette calendar model
trimmed in Black like Michael
used to be.
i rocked it
collar flipped, hair feathered, sleeves
scrunched to elbows and walked to Grove
Elementary as if on the moon... until
Aaron Gilfand spotted me from the road
cackled like the witch that was
his sun burnt mother.

Kim’s bus was late and always
last to arrive. i waited for her
near the end of blacktop, hands deep
in my jeans, eyes searching the ground
for cool. she walked right past me
as if she didn’t know me
cuz she didn’t

i was in Mrs. Flanagan’s homeroom
Kim in Mrs. Howard’s at the end of the hall
near the door. outside a giant willow
wept shade over half the playground.
its branches held out a hand
when there was no one to dance with
where the red Michael Jackson Thriller
jacket hung abandoned
when the school bell rang.

Faded.

2009-05-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a series of poems exploring my whiteboy hoods, mostly stupid shit I did as a kid growing up in the suburbs fascinated with hip-hop music and culture.

Many of these poems have become about ridiculous fashion choices I made around the odd confusions of identity. Over the next little while I plan to post some of the poems in this series. Please come back again soon and check them out... thank u- kc

Faded

the stylist at Michael Anthony Salon
has got no idea what a fresh cut is.

a step, a bowl, a bald wall
straight lined over the ears
like my head wuz a topographically diverse region n shit.

for prom i wanted to get a peace sign shaved in the back.
i went to Quick Cuts in the strip mall on Dundee Rd.
the barber was frail n divorced, dirty
blond hair, thirty somethin, her fingers smelled
like Kools. just put a restraining order
on her second husband. said she’d give it a try.

when i got home
n looked in the mirror

pac man.

a mercedes
hood ornament.

no fuckin peace.

Kevin Coval Featured In The Harvard Crimson

2009-04-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

NY & Boston Tour

2009-04-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday April 5th, 7 pm, @ KGB Bar
85 E. 4th St. Kevin Coval With Paul Beatty (Slumberland, The White Boy Shuffle)
and Adam Mansbach (Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews)

Monday April 6th, 7PM @ Bar 13
35 E 13th St in Union Square,

Tuesday April 7 6:30p.m @ The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
108 Orchard Street I SPEAK OF THE CITY: POEMS OF NEW YORK
Stephen Wolf curates readings from his anthology the most extensive collection of poems ever assembled about New York. (i have a poem in the book and will participate in the reading)

WEDNESDAY APRIL 8 7: 30 THE Williamsburg Poetry Series
with Willie Perdomo and Samantha Thornhill
@ : The Lazy Catfish 593 Lorimer Street (bet Metropolitan and Conselyea)
L to Lorimer or G to Metropolitan - 1/2 block from train station

Friday April 10, 10pm @ The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
@ 236 E 3rd St

Monday April 13 @ Harvard
8pm in the Quincy Cage,
in the basement of Quincy House
58 Plympton Street, Cambridge, MA

Kevin Coval Video Opportunity

2009-04-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Louder Than A Bomb

2009-02-20T09:02:00.001-08:00

Click to enlarge

Kevin Coval Center Stage Interview

2009-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Kevin Coval is an author/spoken-word poet who has penned two critically acclaimed books: Slingshots (EM Press 2005), which was named a "Book of the Year" finalist by The American Library Association, and Everyday People (EM Press 2008). His poems have graced the pages of the Chicago Tribune, The Spoken Word Revolution, Rattle, Cross Currents and The Huntington Post, to name a few. He's appeared in four seasons of Def Poetry Jam (for which he also serves as artistic consultant), makes regular appearances on NPR and started the world's largest teen poetry festival, called Louder than a Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival.

And as if his resume wasn't impressive enough, Coval has served as an ambassador for hip-hop by making countless pilgrimages to locations all across the globe including The Parliament of the World's Religions in Cape Town, South Africa, The African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, University of the West Indies in Jamaica and St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, India. Centerstage was lucky enough to catch up with Coval while he was in Chicago to talk about everything from his new book to the late, great Studs Terkel.

Tell me a little about where you grew up and how you got interested in hip-hop?
I grew up in Northbrook. I started listening to hip-hop around 1982. "Flashdance," "Beat Street" and "Breakin'" were important movies for me as a kid. I tried to break early on, I danced on cardboard in front of the convenience store for change. I was kinda wack, but stayed listening to the music. Herbie Hancock's "Rockit," a bit later heard Run DMC's "King of Rock" and was entranced by the fun and brilliance of their wordplay; the circus-like language and juggling they engaged in.

When did poetry begin to creep into your creative development?
Hip-Hop is poetry. KRS-ONE called himself a poet. Chuck D would send me to the library to look up references he was making in his rhymes. These emcees were consciously participating in and exposing me to an alternative canon of verse in American letters, verse that felt more inclusive of the American experience; a working class narrative, not just dead white dudes getting lost in the woods.

Why take on the role of a poet/author rather than a straight-up MC?
I love rhyming and choose at times to use various rhyme schemes and forms in my poems, but for me poetry broadens the possibility of my poetic. I sometimes, while writing rhymes, feel trapped by 4/4 time, and there are amazing emcees who break that time, but for me, the freedom on the verse, of the blank page, of recording a story for my life and the lives around me, seems best suited for a poem. I do, however, feel my responsibility is to still move the crowd. Like Rakim said, this is what it means to MC, to reach people where they are at.

There seems to be a fine line between spoken-word and rap. Draw the line for me.
There is and isn't a line. Both are the same ancient forms of oral story-telling, all indigenous traditions tell and retell their histories. Rappers are poets, poets are spoken-word artists, spoken-word artists are emcees and backwards from there. And in all these forms, including traditional canonical poets, there are writers who take their craft seriously and excel, and there is a whole lot of wackness everywhere. And this is true in all forms. There are a billion wack dance recitals, but then there is Wakka from the Brickheadz or other amazing dancers. The idea of movement, of what is possible with the body is transformed. Language is common, but to hear how Lil' Wayne pulls apart the sounds of words, or how Ang 13 splits styles and elevates rhyme to a new-school blues, the idea of wordplay and the musicality of language is altered and advanced.

You're an ambassador for hip-hop, with your visits to universities and different countries. How has academia accepted your work as a whole?
Academia is always late to the party. That's part of its role, to preserve, but the new is often happening outside its walls. I teach colleges that the freshest culture happens by and large outside the institutions when people create for the sake of creation, not degrees.

Tell me a little about your relationship with Def Poetry Jam, and how that came to fruition.
In 2000 or 2001, before the HBO show, there was a 12-city tour. In each city there was a poetry slam and a showcase. When the folks from Def Jam came to Chicago, I read in the showcase at the MCA, and after the show HBO producers whispered in my ear that there would be this show on HBO and to stay in touch. I never really believed them, but every now and again I'd drop Deb Pointer, one of the producers, a line just saying "what's up." She said it was all coming together and eventually they got the go-ahead to film four episodes for the first season. I appeared on that season and four of the six seasons in all.

I see that you have a wonderful quote from Studs Terkel on your bio page. Were you able to develop a friendship with him before he passed? Any words on Studs himself?
I am humbled what Studs said about me and the book, he was very generous. I have been radically shaped by his belief in the elevation of the personal narrative and his radically egalitarian views of people's stories. Whether the mayor or a nurse or custodian or bartender, he thought all folks were equally relevant and interesting. I met him a couple of times and we shared a stage at the Steppenwolf, but he read my work because Rick Kogan, himself a Chicago institution and Studs' heir, gave Studs my book. I received a beautiful letter from Studs upon his reading it and am honored to pick up a pen in the same city he recorded in.

Tell me about Everyday People?
Realist portraits of people I see often, or have met once; a meditation on Chicago and American History. In the tradition of Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, trying to record the stories in front of my nose and capture the beauty and brutality of the city, to hold in the same moments this paradox and seeming contradiction that is Chicago/America. In this city, in the same moment we have a governor to evict and a President-elect, now President. This is typical of our city, our country.

How did you bring together the Louder Than a Bomb series? And what has been your strongest tool for battling apathy within the youth?
Nine years ago an amazing poet and educator, Anna West, and I along with Young Chicago Authors, created LTAB. We were finding in classrooms all over the city young people who responded well when asked what they thought about the world(s) they inhabit. Chicago has a failing public school system, and part of the reason for this is that students are not engaged in the classroom because they are not asked to connect the learning to their everyday lives. Our pedagogy is to invert the teacher-student model, and simply ask students to become reporters and recorders of the neighborhoods they live in. They become, in the words of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, "real-life documentarians."

It's a loaded question, but what about Chicago inspires you?
The people. We are a proud and great and segregated city filled with contradictions and tradition and hope. We are the great American city, NY really being cosmopolitan and LA being plastic. As goes Chicago so goes the rest of the country, we are the heart center, and as of Nov. 4 the rest of the world got hip to that.

You seem to wear many different creative hats, is there any place you like to go just to relax and settle the mind?
Montrose Harbor, I got aunts in Michigan City and the local drive south and 41 through Gary are always chill. I recently became an artist in residence at the U of C and Hyde Park is a kind of oasis. I like film so the art houses in Chicago are pretty great, the Gene Siskel Center, the Landmark and Music Box. But for real though riding the train is kind of relaxing to me, comforting for some reason: the loops and the trains make the bodies huddled and quiet, the public intimacy of napping commuters, all these places.

Who are some of your favorite Chicago personalities?
Dr. Haki Madhubuti, Rick Kogan, Ang 13, Marc Smith, Rami Nashashibi, my aunt Joyce and cousins Jackie and Charlotte.

Why I Stopped Going To Synagogue

2009-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

From Kevin Coval's new chapbook:

How Jewish Boys Get Irish Names - Available Soon!!

Why I Stopped Going To Synagogue

plush purple seats

high ceilings, stained

glass running the east

and west walls

white Abraham

white Moses

white David

colored like sheep

to look like everyone in the seats

below

the only memory i have from Hebrew day school:

Noah’s Arc wasn’t big enough

in the lobby of Anshe Emet

around the corner from Aunt Joyce’s house

where i’d stay when my parents worked

or dated, and for several years i went

for high holidays to break fast with her:

a mannequin models a bullet

proof vest. computer printer paper,

laminated, taped on the wall explains:

in the new year, Anshe Emet

will buy vests for tortured Israeli citizens.

please show your support for the victims.

write a check to…

the new rabbi

is new age-

y, only wants

congregants

practicing

yoga

on Kol Nidre

a representative from the mid-west

Israeli consulate took the bema,

asked the congregation to support the wall

being built to protect Jews from Arabs. a wall of hope

he called it, to separate and secure. the rabbi is nodding

the consulate representative describes how Palestinians

will not be able to enter Jerusalem, how there will be more

rigorous systems of check points, how under our seats

lie envelops and how we can show our support this day.

the choir they rent

sound like goyium

the urban justice program,

meaning the lone day we invite

black folks to the synagogue

(minus those already employed as custodians),

is an MLK day celebration,

where we remind the Reverend’s flock

Abraham Joshua Heschel marched

with King so it’s all kosher

after Hebrew school

the parking lot fills

with BMW SUVs

during the ten days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

we admit our transgressions; seek refuge in the forgiveness of G-d

but first must receive and the forgiveness of Others.

after the consulate representative speaks

Rabbi Siegel gives his sermon.

he praises Israel

as the only democracy in the middle east.

weeps for the body count of Jews living

the universal dream of Nationalism.

he counts Jewish bodies,

only our bodies count.

he recounts the call of the consulate representative.

calls for the maintenance of borders, check points,

the building of walls.

calls the Knesset,

the settlements

the United States,

just.

from the bema,

on the holiest night of our calendar

in year 5764,

the rabbi is proclaiming G-d-

’s plan, and G-d’s plan for Israel,

he says,

like it was in Egypt,

is just

and must

be painted

with blood

11.

i will never return

Winter Block Party For Chicago's Hip-Hip Arts

2009-01-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

Open Mic Academy

2009-01-12T15:36:00.001-08:00

Cafe Intifada

2009-01-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

Yes We Can and Sometimes We Won't

2009-01-06T11:45:00.001-08:00

The winter is now our reality. The long commute, the grey slush and trudge through unplowed streets. The digging out of cars with ice picks, spaces claimed with lawn chairs like flags on the moon. Forty-five minutes on a two-story L platform, as the wind whips and the heating lamp overhead is recently broke. Summer is so long ago these grey days, it seems it never existed.

This is the burden of Chicago. The great paradox: we have a president-elect and a governor to evict. A city that works and neighborhoods where work is harder to come by. Food deserts and top chefs, Gold Coasts and Lawndales, we are Division Streets and Austin, viaducts and train line segregation, Rogers and Hyde Park bizarres, the flattest of Plaines with the tallest of buildings, we are the center of the country and the most overlooked, the summer and the winter; we live
fully in the breadth of the possible.

I met Jack on the Brown line. He hopped on at Lake Street, boisterous in Army-Navy Surplus, a XXL army green coat with a hunter's orange lining. His coat is open and his big belly jiggles as he sits in the seat directly in front of me. He seems like a drunk Santa an hour or two after shift, but Jack says tomorrow is his birthday and it's been three years since his last drink and his last x-wife, and tonight he's heading home from an A.A. meeting. His body big enough for train seats built for two.

Jack says his favorite Christmas movie is Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a made-for-TV special that premiered in 1964. It tells the story of Rudolph who is looking for a place where he belongs and finds the island of misfit toys; a toy solider with a leg missing, the wind-up drummer whose off-beat and missing a stick. Jack says he could be king of this island.

He'll exit at Belmont and transfer to the red line toward Uptown where he rents a room for a $150 a month with other sober people he says, who stay to themselves and who sometimes share a meal. He's talking non-stop as he rises on silver sticks at Fullerton; he says he's working on a screenplay about an alcoholic who creates a talk radio show and is trying to put his life back together as he tries to help others with their lives on the call in, and it kinda goes back and forth between the people and this guy like a mirror he says, right before the doors open at Belmont. Now i gave you my one bright idea, he says back to me, still sitting in my Brown Line seat as he readies to walk off the train. You're not gonna steal it are ya? Jack smiles like a drunk Santa as the black plastic binds the doors, and separates us between steel and glass. He stares at me and yells, what the hell, it's yours! Turning and walking across the wooden platform, to wait for the Red, Howard light charging north-bound.

And to me this is Chicago; the unbelievable poetry and tragedy and comedy. And should we believe Jack or Barack or Blagojevich or any crazy man talking on a train? Santa, himself, was touched up by Coke in a Chicago Ad Agency. These are happy holidays and tough times, and we will stay working and grinding in this immense hustle, telling gigantic tales to anyone who listens, trying to piece together our fractured lives and find our place among the misfits.

Parting The Red, White And Blues Available Now!

2008-12-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

iTunes /// Amazon /// eMusic

Everyday People Hits Stores Today!

2008-11-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

Kevin Coval Feature - Decider Chicago

2008-10-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

Kevin Coval On Def Poetry Jam

2008-09-28T23:23:00.000-07:00

'Chicken ala Tony the Tiger' From Everyday People

2008-08-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Louder Than A Bomb Documentary Trailer

2008-07-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

"Everyday People" Book Release Readings

2008-07-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

Kevin Coval
"Everyday People" Book Release
July 31 & August 1 2008
@ Victory Gardens
Chicago Illinois