LITMIR.BIZ

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nd, to begin words.

      The mouths we speak with are hidden by our other mouths.

HEARTBREAK

      The couple, who have dated on and off since 2002, got engaged over a lobster and pasta dinner during a vacation on the island of Capri in August 2006.

      How does People magazine know this?

      I hate to say things look like butterflies, but what should I say—the island

      looks like motion? Like a liver?

      It’s an island.

      You proposed to her and it looks like a butterfly.

      The Italian map, covered in via, via, via. The Italian mountain. Citrus and gulls. I have never been to Italy, let alone to Capri. And I have never been to an island so small.

      When the New York Times reporters write about 808s & Heartbreak, they write how it came after “ ” with the death of his mother in late 2007 and, in early 2008, breaking up with his fiancée.

      They don’t name her. Alexis Phifer.

      If Alexis is the woman in “Heartless,” in the video, thank you

      for covering her dress in stars.

      I have planned my wedding—sent the invitations, tasted all the cakes, bought my dress, named for its sweetheart top, and sparkling. My mother has rsvP’d.

      I got engaged in the courtyard of a museum in Philadelphia—Museum of

      Archaeology and Anthropology.

      Mummies resting

      behind us, and sculptures from China.

      The past pushes us.

      I lament what you have lost even if you do not still love her.

      I think of all the coves of Capri—Cala del Lupinaro, Cala del Rio, Cala di Mezzo, Cala Spravata, Cala Marmolata, Cala di Matermania. And Kapros, meaning wild boar.

LIKE THE POEMS DO

      I ask,

      “Who’s that?”

      and Noah answers,

      “Mos Def.”

      “Is Kanye rapping like Snoop Dogg there?”

      “No. His jaw is wired shut.”

      Another song,

      “Is that Common?”

      “Yes. They’re friends. They’re both from Chicago.”

      Noah’s been listening

      to rap since middle school. He used to make tapes

      off the radio and listen to them until they broke.

      I grew up saying, I listen to everything but country

      and rap.

      Recently, I spent another evening researching Kanye.

      This time

      about his 2004 debut album, College Dropout.

      “Through the Wire” came out fast, without permission for the sample of Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire.”

      I tell Noah. We’re on our computers,

      across the room.

      He pulls up Khan’s song; I pull up Kanye’s music video.

      The room is a mess of sound.

      I tell Noah how Kanye kisses his hand, places it

      on a larger-than-life poster of Khan.

      Is there a poem of Kanye as a teenager, loving

      the woman who sings, too,

      “I’m Every Woman”?

      A smaller poster in his smaller room.

      Noah with posters of Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill,

      if he were the sort of boy to have posters.

      Noah and I move to the bedroom soon,

      and every night. Noah lets me

      bring Kanye in,

      knows our life has room for all of it.

CON MOTO

      While swallowing a prenatal vitamin before bed, I’m watching an MTV interview

      with Rick Ross about how

      you taught him to see music in colors.

      He calls you Ye, pronounced yay, dropping Kan.

      Musical terms, held onto from Italian, found on printed music, begin with con

      because they begin with

      with.

      Con espressione, con moto, become, informally, espressione, moto, spirito, affetto, dolore, forza, gran, molto, fuoco, larghezza, slancio, sordino, anima, brio, amore. Shook free.

      And we should love our own sounds.

      Feeling, movement, spirit, affect, sadness, force, great feeling, much feeling, fire,

      broadness, enthusiasm, muted tone, feeling again, and vigor, and tenderness

      or love.

      Another connection between you and Italy, between you and music. Another

      way to say beautiful things that I have learned tonight.

      If bellies stirred before babies were big enough, mine’d be kicking.

JESUS WALKS

      This poem could start, “I love you,” instead of ending there.

      It could start, “Music.”

      The key to this poem is connecting this sentence,

      from the lyrics of Kanye’s “Jesus Walks”

      to this sentence,

      Show ’em the wounds

      from a making of video that follows the making of the third music video for “Jesus Walks.”

      Kanye said, after the first two videos, “I still felt like I didn’t have the hood, and that’s what Jesus walks for, it’s for the hood.”

      I can think, have thought, of great line breaks for that quote. Already had to think of punctuation.

      The man who said, “Show ’em the wounds,” is, I imagine, a friend of Kanye’s. But Kanye’s not around for this:

      “I’m here with my n****, Romeo, looking smooth and shit. You know what I’m saying. Official, n****. How many times you got shot?”

      “Nine,” he’s grinning and lifts up his shirt.

      “Nine times goddamnit, and he ain’t even no rapper, bitch.” Pause. “I’m with my other n****,” the man to his left, “how many times you got shot, n****? Tell ’em.”

      “Five times.”

      “Show ’em the wounds. Show ’em the wounds, show ’em the wounds.” And he adds, “I ain’t never got shot but my n****s did.”

      Stars all across my paper. Stars when I look at something blindingly beautiful. When I fall. When I first learn of stars.

      Someone on the production crew yells out, “Come on in pigeon holders.” Someone says, “I got dirt and blood standing by.”

      Many voices behind Kanye’s repeat, “Jesus walks.”

      An actor—the one lit on fire for the video, the one carrying a cross big enough to carry him—says

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