His nose like mine. Arms, legs,
moving. Everything moving.
7
I want to lie in the grass of my yard with my son.
Every part of him in the sun. Every part of each of us.
ON NOVEMBER 10TH, 2007, DONDA WEST DIED
On November 10th, 2008, you were between shows. November 9th, Dublin, Ireland. November 11th, London, England.
By ferry and car, the journey from Dublin to London takes about eight hours.
By plane, about an hour.
I have to imagine you flew. But maybe not. Maybe you spent two hours, three hours, on a ferry.
The journey between two points is such a straight line.
Maybe you needed to be on the Irish Sea. The blue of it. The blue looks miserable.
The very shape of the sea is like a face, mourning, gagging on a moan.
And it must be salty, like all seas.
Though for a sea to leave cliffs instead of beaches.
That tells me it’s killed its fair share of mothers.
The Irish stop clocks at the time of death. They stay with the body day and night until the burial. They recite poems. They sing. They cry and drink. They kiss the dead body.
Given the autopsy, at least some of these, you were unable to do.
But the first anniversary of a death. I know it.
We sometimes burn a yahrzeit candle. It burns for 24 hours, or 26, or 3 days, more. It’s white and burns in a tall glass so you don’t have to worry about leaving an open flame over night.
Do you worry about your house burning down?
You spent the nights around the anniversary of your mother’s death on a stage that looked like the universe.
Planets. Shooting stars. A galaxy—pink and perfect.
You were glowing in the dark. And you were black in the dark.
And a monster came on stage to eat you.
To gobble you up. As mothers say.
DEAR DONDA
1
I wonder what you would think, seeing the dead white women in Kanye’s “Monster” music video.
I wonder what you would think of me, vitreous, near translucent in my skin.
When you thought of white women, I wonder if you thought of Under the Tuscan Sun.
2
This isn’t the time for a racist joke.
It’s my fear coming out.
That I’m growing to be a worthless voice.
3
I had a professor who read an early draft of “Kanye’s Skeletal System.”
He didn’t believe you would hold Kanye’s face, not because he was hurt, but because
you weren’t a caring woman. Something about how much money you had,
something about dying after plastic surgery.
My giant belly in front of me made it easier to sit and fight
than leave the room. You’re being racist.
And I told him you had a PhD in English. I knew he’d be surprised,
but I wish I hadn’t told him.
So many worthwhile women in this world.
Black or not. Mother or not. Rich or not. Plastic surgery or not. Dead or not.
4
Another man tells me I haven’t made enough of your death.
Well, I miss you, the idea of you I can carry around after reading
“ .”
That’s all I have to say about it.
When I wanted to put my fingers in your hair, I wasn’t saying, Can I touch it?
I was saying caress.
RUNAWAY
On Kanye West’s website is a still frame from his movie—Kanye carrying a woman from an explosion filled with as many pinks as yellows and oranges (and a red like a flaming heart, if a burnt thing reddened, if light were pushed through the skin).
Just below it, there’s a Twitter feed. It shows three tweets at a time. Any tweet hashtagged with
Runaway, runaway, RunAway, etc.
The first tweet when I visit today:
“I txt my Mom & told her I love her, she said I coulda came downstairs to say that… I dnt think she noticed I was gone LMFAO! #RunAway”
I didn’t understand at first. So literal. So misplaced. She had actually run away. From her mother.
And she was laughing about it.
As if,
in front of Kanye.
aftermath
… taking a 15 second blip the mdeia have successfully painted the image of the “ANGRY BLACK MAN’ The King Kong theory.
KANYE WEST on Twitter, 6:22 a.m., Sept. 4, 2010,
via web; retweeted by 100+ people
THREE MONTHS, TO THE DAY, BEFORE TAYLOR TURNED TWENTY, BUT KANYE
I’m not mad. I read on your site about how you spoke to Taylor’s mother, heard your mother in her. You used over forty exclamation marks and I think that’s how America needs to be spoken to. America can be found pining for you in her bedroom. Your hair like an Aztec god’s. Your biceps like the end of days. This moment, on YouTube, viewed millions of times. Taylor’s little ketchup mouth.
I could see that Beyoncé had to smile. Even I could see that.
AFTERMATH
The world that opened,
as if Kanye were Hades and Taylor, Persephone,
and we all believed in the Greek myths and traveled back
in time to save her, to have our say, shake a fist.
I mean, everyone, just everyone, asks if I’ll write a poem
about the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
What deep hole in the Earth is this?
HATE FOR KANYE
As found on: youtube.com/watch?v=9d8S_9PZ56M, a clip (viewed 6,305,621 times) about the Taylor Swift incident.
Comments time-stamped as of 5:30 pm on November 7, 2010 (over a year after the incident).
3 hours ago :
@ not only is he a freakin pubic headed idiot, I bet his_ breath smells like shit … dumb ass afro!!!
21 hours ago :
@ -damn right! Kayne is an arrogant racist prick! It’s funny_ that your so politically correct calling him “afro american” because he would probably call you a cracker or honkey or something like that, and he would get away with it. kanye west is an overall mean ignorant asshole!
2 days ago :
I hope_ Chuck Norris kills Kanye West.
3 days ago :
I’m not saying someone should beat the living_ crap out of Kanye West, but I’m not not saying it either.
1 day ago :
@ i’ll do it for free man just tell me where his ass live’s & he’s got a ass kicking coming his way & i hate kanye he’s a fucking punkass bitch who’s never have pussie since pussie had him motherfucker need’s to do kkk a favor & kill himself & no i’m not racist or a member of the_kkk but kanye disgrace’s black’s everywhere & forever is to be label as a nigger as only nigger do that shit a black person doesn’t.
3 days ago :
K West … Your a dick you_ faggot black asshole..your a disgrace to not only blacks but to all Americans … get the fuck out of here you morron!!
3 days ago :
fuck you kanye_
4 days ago :
kanye is the most uneducated_ human(?) being ever!
4 days ago :
Kanye is a fucking douchebag little bitch he only went on stage to get some camera time because he never wins any awards cause he has no fans exept the black homos_ that are actually stupid enough to believe anything that comes out of his big mouth.
2 weeks ago :
is Kanye_Dead yet???? DAMN I was sooo HOPING
2 weeks ago :
What an absolute piece of shit racist fuck stick he is. Some one should take him out and shoot him to make_ the world a better place!
A DAY AT THE MALL REMINDS ME OF AMERICA
Recently, my 14-year-old sister was approached at the mall to see if she’d be interested in working at Hollister, or Abercrombie and Fitch, or American Eagle. I can’t remember.
She’s that beaut
iful. And with the mall’s lights all around her—I can only imagine.
Yet on Facebook, one of her friends calls her a loser. More write, “I hate you.”
I wonder if Kanye knows that these girls are experimenting. As with rum. As with skin, all the ways to touch it.
My day at the mall begins with a Wild Cherry ICEE and an Auntie Anne’s Original Pretzel. A craving.
I pass women who you can tell are pregnant, and I know we all might be carrying daughters.
The mall is so quiet. The outside of the Hollister looks like a tropical hut, like the teenage girls should be sweating inside.
No one’s holding doors for me yet, but they will as I take the shape of my child.
And if my child has a vicious tongue, it will take shape lapping at my breast.
TAYLOR DOESN’T SPEAK OUT AGAINST RACISM
People are upset because Kanye’s talking about Taylor again.
He apologizes without apologizing. He speaks out. He rehashes. But this time
he says, “Taylor never came to my defense at any interview …”
So the media writes as if little girls all over the country are upset again.
But I’ve read the comments and I think it’s some of Taylor’s white knights
who keep up with these articles. Who else says “waste a shell on this POS”?
I’m starting to blame her, too. She could sing a song about it
that makes a little more sense. She could say, Don’t hate him.
IT’S HARD NOT TO BE MOVED
I can tell—it’s starting to get to Noah.
Often he’s with me when I’m doing research.
Today I went to copy-paste a comment into an e-mail, and he stopped me,
said I needed to take both comments,
that it was significant that there were only two and this is what they said.
So this part is for Noah:
http://www.411mania.com/music/news/164797/Kanye-West-To-Appear-On-Kardashian-Reality-Show.htm
Comments (2)
1) Wow, Kanye looks mad fuckin lame in that pic. At least he [mostly] makes good music.
Posted By: SS87 (Guest) on December 04, 2010 at 01:12 AM
2) fucking awesome!!!!….no, really…i hope he dies….i do, i hope he goddamn dies…fuck him, goddamn concieted hypocrit muther fucker…the
only ratings he will deliver is if he gets decapitated on live television during half time of the super bowl…i’d actually watch that
and don’t feed me any of your sympathetic bullshit…he’s an untalented con artist and racistthat deserves to be beaten with a hammer and thrown screaming from a helicopter
Posted By: mikey (Guest) on December 04, 2010 at 04:21 AM
We’re both still surprised at the racism and violence and hate.
We’re full of fear
but that’s not what fearsome means.
HATE IS FOR HITLER
my mother used to tell me.
So I said and say, I don’t like … really don’t like … can’t stand …
My grandmother used to say it.
I wonder if Kanye’s mother said it too.
Unconditional love
is what she speaks most about in her memoir.
I wonder if raised in a good family in Alabama
she picked up the same saying
my grandmother did
when she lived with her mother as one
of the oldest of six sisters and five brothers
in Philadelphia after the Depression.
All of my grandmother’s friends went off to World War II.
She went to the dances for the servicemen, held them,
then followed the lists that were posted, lists of dead men.
How can these kids say they hate Kanye?
Why do they hate? Why is the word
in their mouths and out their fingers?
I think Kanye’s like me,
and I think it’s incomprehensible.
I think he and I and my mother and Donda West
are easily moved.
We enter into discourse thinking first,
love.
BECAUSE KANYE ISN’T KING KONG OR EMMETT TILL OR A N****
When I admire my small, white nose, I’m Taylor Swift.
Too, if I’m made of red candies and floral underwear,
if I spend a day descending all the stairways I can find.
It’s one way to be a woman, a woman being a girl.
I could meet the many white knights, with their hands
around swords, their ears perked to the motion of men.
If I ever thought life was a whistle, I thought it twice.
dear kanye
KANYE WEST, “Power,” line 13 of verse 2
MY SUMMER WITH KANYE
So many crickets, small and brown, so small, babies maybe, hardly in control, their jumps foolish and sweet.
My birthday this year was everything I wanted it to be. My mother and sisters came. We swam in the Hampton Inn’s outdoor pool. We ate prepared foods from Wegman’s.
That day, the New York Times ArtsBeat blog posted about a preview of Kanye’s music video for “Power.”
So much is false, and the voice of the viewer. Is Kanye imposing? Is the chain heavy? Do the women kneel before him? What does that look like? A woman apologizing? With some request?
The horns are not as devilish as they are the horns of dinosaurs, the Minotaur, an African gazelle, a god of the sea I imagine, the shapes of twisted arms, dark, twisted arms.
And there is no ceiling. The sky moves in the video.
Two weeks later, Kanye is quoted as saying, “I’m not trying to dive into anything unless I really, really think that I can marry this person. I look at this person and I say, ‘This is how I want my daughter to be.’ ”
I’m thinking of babies, too.
WATCHING WEEKS
I am mother to the smallest baby.
Inside, fingernails grow this week.
So we bought our first video camera.
The language of documentation
comes to me immediately. “This is
what I’m working on. This is
your dad doing a dance for you.”
I didn’t mention Kanye. But
this week is no small week for him.
He premiered his 35-minute movie.
He compared his shots to Kubrick,
his acting to Tarantino. And he
explained his ideas on MTV as if
he were speaking to children.
This should be a week I commit
to grading 80 pages of student work,
but I can’t help but sleep. 16 hours
one day. 14 another. I wake to eat.
My students ask me to play more
Kanye music videos during our class.
And I think we could put the label
“Phenomenon” above his name
in the center of the board. Follow
“Causes” to the left, “Consequences”
to the right. How many composition
lessons I could make about Kanye,
his music and life. If I felt up to it.
This week I try to feel the baby, still
hidden from us, from Noah’s kisses.
I TRY NOT TO SEE MYSELF AS A MOTHER FIGURE
I imagine Kanye’s hand on my stomach
because I’ve begun to imagine that everyone’s
touching me through my clothes.
I was not one for fantasies,
but fantasizing makes me more of a woman.
If I see Kanye’s teeth
in my bedroom, if I see him
with the head of a falcon, penis of a buck
(which I’ve never seen), or
if I see myself in his studio,
in his house, introduced to Jay-Z,
drinking what I can’t drink—I am a fool.
I am encouraged to paint myself the fool.
Tattoo of Kanye’s head on my hip.
Something to morph.
To humble me. Humiliate me.
If I can only see myself protecting Kanye,
am I even a woman?
DEAR KANYE,
I can’t draw a parallel today between you and the branch I saw on the sidewalk. It wasn’t like the tree branches here—it was like one you’d see on the beach, maybe only a New Jersey beach, but I think others, too. And it resembled an arm. That’s what I remember thinking. And it wasn’t the first time something on these sidewalks near my house reminded me of an arm or a hand. There’s a leaf I remember distinctly. My mind is so quick to see these dead pieces of trees as lonely parts of the body. And my mind tries to connect this stone-gray arm to you. My mind sees that where the branch broke from the tree (if it is a branch at all and not chopped from the trunk), there is wood that curves together to the sidewalk in such a way that fingers might. And my mind asks if these are not the fingers that move freely in a dream and play some kind of music for you, or run along the top of your head in the manner of one who loves you. Are they not the fingers that begin to resemble your mother’s?