Mr. West

  I realize some days I shouldn’t write about you.

  AFTER DONDA DIED, KANYE DATED AMBER

  The question all around the internet was,

  Is Kanye West’s Girlfriend Trashy?

  Her birth name is Alyssa Audrey Rose Palmer.

  On YouTube, the interviews are short and sometimes

  raunchy as hell.

  “I’m actually a virgin in my ass,” she said.

  In other videos, all the ones where her face is

  front and center, and she’s got blue lipstick, sunglasses

  in the shapes of hearts,

  or her bra out—

  she’s chewing gum. Like a cow,

  I think, in my eighth grade science teacher’s voice.

  She licks her teeth while she’s making points like,

  “I don’t have a stylist.”

  Something along the lines of make sure they know,

  “I style myself.”

  Her interviewer responds,

  “I live and die for that,”

  in a voice I’ve heard on black sitcoms in the ’90s.

  Someone in the comments writes

  to women who watch this video—like me—

  “YO IF THERES ANY OTHA HOT_ CHICK LIKE THIS ONE holl-

  laaa”

  Do I respond?

  Is he trashy?

  Why do women watch this video of Amber?

  Are they looking for the Kanye in her?

  Girl, raised by her aunt, with a name as sunshine as hers—Mary Lakes.

  Girl, Portuguese, Italian, African, Irish. Former

  exotic dancer. Featured in music videos of Young Jeezy and Ludacris.

  I remember hearing that she might marry Kanye in the Caribbean in January 2011.

  I remember thinking, Is she trashy as all get out, right on Kanye’s arm?

  SUGE KNIGHT

  Suge is pronounced like sugar without its -ar.

  Liar turns lie. Color turns cull. Whisper, wisp.

  In August 2005, Kanye hosted a party before the Video Music Awards. And Suge got shot there.

  MSNBC reports:

  ambulance, fire and police officials swarmed

  the shooter was described as black and wearing a pink shirt

  Giddy. Frivolous.

  Treasure, trezh. Splendor, splend. Shiner, shine.

  In March 2010, Suge is suing Kanye for money, but a car accident keeps him from his court date.

  Perez Hilton reports

  a quote from Knight’s lawyer:

  Nobody likes Kanye West anymore.

  Even though he’s still selling millions of records, everybody’s

  sick of him.

  Error, err. Geyser, guise. Razor, raise blaze.

  The bullet took the light from the front of the gun. The bullet took the light into the leg and bone.

  I think Suge’s alight with something like grief.

  Can Kanye save him from something like that?

  KANYE AS A QUANTUM PARTICLE YET TO BE OBSERVED

  Is there room in a biography for what didn’t happen?

  December 2010, Miami—Kanye’s once-scheduled court date

  with Suge Knight.

  January 2011, Dominican Republic—his once-rumored

  wedding to Amber Rose.

  Less than three hours to fly from one place to the other, to fly

  over the Bahamas that fall like inch worms from Florida’s peninsula,

  to fly to a country that shares an island with Haiti, that nearly touches

  Port Au Prince with its border like a series of shark fins.

  How would their marriage have begun? Following such trouble,

  the slow pulse of the Earth destroying the Earth. But then,

  how funny if Suge’s missing earring had ended up on Amber’s finger.

  Photos of her in the tabloids as she leaves a car, stands from a table.

  If Kanye’s life collided, collapsed. If he woke one morning

  and, having made no decisions, all the possibilities came to be.

  hybrid

  WE LIVE THIS SHIT! WE EMBODY THIS SHIT! WE WOULD IDE FOR THIS SHIT SO YOU YOU CAN LIVE FOR THIS SHIT!

  KANYE WEST, on Twitter, 2:05 p.m.,

  Jan. 26, 2011, via web; retweeted by 50+ people

  GOD’S FACE OVER GOLD

  Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.

  But his eyes are like man’s. His voice overflows.

  So it must be his mouth, his tongue unrolled.

  Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.

  I think he hears prayers when nights are cold.

  He can’t be a man when his heart’s a rose.

  Kanye West has a god’s face over gold.

  But his eyes are like man’s. His voice overflows.

  TWILIGHT: STARRING KANYE

  The vampires are who everybody

  wants in their movies right now, but who knows

  what new creature we’ll see ourselves kissing. I’m

  thinking the next one won’t idealize a

  white man, but maybe those motherfucking

  types go on forever. What monster

  has such sparkling black skin? What monster

  has sparkling black skin but everybody

  can find him more man than motherfucking

  beast, can still desire him, godlike, knows

  it’s safe for their sweet daughters to have a

  cutout of him in their sweet bedrooms. I’m

  not thinking of zombie Michael. I’m

  thinking the black man can’t be a monster

  because he is one, because we won’t let a

  fantasy form around him. Everybody

  has at least one dream where the city knows

  it’s in trouble. And it’s the motherfucking

  dreamer who has a foot on motherfucking

  towers, people, and cars and shit. Or I’m

  hoping I’m not the only one. God knows

  there’s room for one sweating, flexing monster

  in my head. And it’s everybody

  else who’s walking by and flickering a

  bit on the street, just waiting for a

  person like me to ask, “What monster

  would you be? Land or sea? Could everybody

  love you like that?” Somewhere on the street, I’m

  yelling, “You can’t make every monster

  into sexy Halloween costumes.” Kanye knows

  why fantasy exists, and stories, knows

  how to make women look dead and fill a

  room with them. And he’s called a monster.

  I should be in love with motherfucking

  Edward Cullen I guess. I guess I’m

  a fool to love Kanye. And everybody

  can just freak when “

  ” too.

  HYBRID

  Kanye is Horus, or another Egyptian god.

  He is a merman, a centaur, the Minotaur.

  And less mythical, too—a zorse,

  a sand sunflower, a Lonicera fly.

  Kanye is half cannon, half ballet.

  Half canonical, half prey.

  Half my Man of Sorrows.

  Half my son.

  Half an idol for my son.

  Half an idol of diamonds and gold.

  Oh god,

  Kanye is half what makes my heart.

  GAZE

  featuring Catie Rosemurgy

  Most of the privilege has been off the page.

  A white woman has privilege but not power.

  A black celebrity has privilege but not power and also discrimination.

  Has it in his hands, his hood, buried in the pavement against his face.

  A white Jewish woman has privilege until she’s traveling in France.

  Then riots start. Schools and synagogues firebombed.

  “Dirty Jew” written on a statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris in 2005.

  What does hiding look like?

  What doe
s it look like today?

  Most of the violence takes place off the page, as is always the case.

  The ultimate test of the privilege: the violence.

  A black celebrity has privilege as much as he doesn’t have privilege.

  Or not as much. Up and down. Plummeting. Pummeling. Depending.

  A white Jewish woman gets privilege from her mother’s Irish married name. Except for all those signs.

  No N****s, No Jews, No Dogs

  No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

  No Jews Allowed

  No Irish Need Apply

  If it weren’t for the print on the signs.

  For the most part, the violence is not on the page.

  A white pregnant woman has privilege but also shortness of breath, also judgment.

  My ring doesn’t fit on my finger anymore.

  “What did you think?” I asked her.

  She shrugged, “Teen mom.”

  She smiled like I was her darling.

  A black pregnant woman has privilege but worse judgment and also discrimination.

  Still comfortable on her finger, impossible to swell out of, or we would have all done that already.

  In the Holocaust the barrel of a gun was shoved up the vagina of a white pregnant Jewish woman and her baby was shot and so she was.

  Is 70 years a long time?

  For the most part, this page is not violent.

  For the most part, this page is privileged.

  A pregnant woman has privilege until the boys won’t make room for her to get off the bus.

  But when I ask, they do. Another form of privilege. A birch tree I’m peeling bark from, so I can make a boat, so I can get out of here, so I can come back in the spring. So I’m asking.

  And it sounds like, Move. You have to move.

  TEETH

  Do all the children’s teeth come in like razors?

  Noah’s hurt face when our son bites.

  Will Kanye stick his finger in his goddaughter’s mouth?

  Every washed finger on her gums.

  Kanye’s gold teeth are like toy soldiers for a little emperor tongue.

  Or, welded together, the castle.

  Moat inside his lower lip. My finger, the drawbridge.

  If I could touch him there.

  Does every mother remember the first tooth?

  Milk tooth.

  I run my tongue along the back of my own dull teeth.

  One can lose attachment to weariness.

  I understand. But in dreams, they are handsome again.

  When teeth should not even be in dreams.

  Why am I not flying? Why am I not covered in gold?

  KANYE RAPS, “

  ,” PART 1

  Paris is most definitely Kanye.

  Helen, then, is Kim Kardashian.

  King Menelaus is a great number of men in America.

  Achilles. I’m not sure yet who Achilles is.

  Hera is Beyoncé.

  Athena is Nicki Minaj.

  Aphrodite is the night, which allows for things like this.

  The Trojan War is the sex itself.

  KANYE IS GLAMOROUS

  OH “ THE NEW BLACK??? ” SINCE BARACK IS PRESIDENT BLACKS DON’T LIKE FUR COATS, RED LEATHER, AND FRIED CHICKEN ANY MORE?! WHEN YOU TRULY UNDERSTAND CULTURAL SETTINGS, BOUNDARIES, AND OUR MODERN DAY CASTE SYSTEMS, THEN YOU CAN FEEL THE GLORY AND PAIN FROM THE DAYS OF KINGS IN AFRICA TO THE NEW KINGS OF THE MEDIA.

  There is something about fur, isn’t there?

  I remember the coats with fur-lined hoods, and my fashionable sister, and her faux fur,

  how it touched her face and hair.

  I thought of how it would gather dust,

  finely.

  Because I think, often, how to keep a clean house.

  In our house, when we moved in, we found old hat boxes with old hats, one leopard, like

  Audrey Hepburn wore.

  Then there are my ideas of Russia, all the white skin of the characters in Tolstoy’s novels.

  (Because I guess it is racial.) How often they would have touched fur.

  Sometimes I cry that Anna Karenina isn’t real.

  Other times I remember she never abandoned her son.

  There was no son.

  Kanye mentioned the kings in Africa, and yes, them, too. Wearing cheetah, leopard, lion.

  Mouths collapsed as if they once sung.

  And Kanye designed fox fur backpacks for his fashion line, and the women carried them,

  and the word, luxury, appeared over and over.

  A fox neck wrap is 500 dollars, and if I wore only that,

  I would be a sexy woman.

  A shitty hunter, but a sexy woman.

  Maybe not a mother at all.

  I think about the fox that lives in the yards behind ours, and the neighbors, fearing for

  their small dogs. My son, crawling in the grass.

  An animal without skin is

  a stranger animal.

  As a girl, I drew women with foxes around their necks. One woman, her hand stroking

  the red tail, her head distracted, the fox’s head arranged toward her breast.

  The fox’s eye, a jewel?

  I NO LONGER HAVE TO LOOK UP DATES LIKE YOUR BIRTHDAY, JUNE 8, 1977

  You held your 30th birthday party at a Louis Vuitton store. Fitting

  for Kon the Louis Vuitton Don, a name

  that follows your 2000 mixtape, your first.

  People magazine waited outside your party, as I imagine

  they always do. And you told them,

  I’m in my 20s as we speak right now, but at midnight, I’ll be 30. I’m already 30 in Japan and London and everywhere else.

  Inside, Pharrell of The Neptunes and N.E.R.D., an overweight Mariah Carey,

  Common, of course, and Rihanna in a wig.

  And a cake, at least three feet long, with your signature bear on it,

  his wild-colored eyes.

  Another cake too, with your name spelled wrong, Kayne. Who doesn’t know you?

  After the party, 30,000 dollars of merchandise was missing. So says Hip Hop Crunch.

  More people who want to write about you. The hundreds

  of reviewers on Amazon, the commenters on YouTube, the bloggers, the magazines,

  the poet.

  And now you’re 37.

  KANYE RAPS, “

  ,” PART 2

  Achilles.

  I couldn’t see it before

  because I’m Achilles.

  Apollo, god of poetry,

  light, music, and plague,

  stuck an arrow in my heel.

  Except

  not yet.

  We’re not at the war’s end.

  There is time still

  to utter and croon.

  *

  THE UNENDING WORLD THAT CONNECTS US: NOTES AND FURTHER READING

  “‘Runaway’ Premieres in Los Angeles on October 18, 2010”: See Kanye West on Ellen.

  “Ha Ha Hum”: See West’s “Barry Bonds.”

  “Heartbreak”: See 808s & Heartbreak as Noah’s Valentine’s Day present for me in 2009.

  “Heartbreak”: See a $466 fee for a quote. See www.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/kanye_west.

  “Con Moto”: See West interviewed by MTV in 2005. See him speak out against gay bashing, saying, “Not just hip-hop, but America just discriminates. And I wanna just, to come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, ‘Yo, stop it.’ ”

  “Jesus Walks”: See, between the two verses, the fourth line. See Channel Zero TV.

  “Mythic”: See creation myths. See October 23, 2002.

  “God Created Night and It Was Night”: See Genesis.

  “The Fallible Face”: See Ethics and Infinity and Totality and Infinity by Emmanuel Levinas.

  “In Song”: See lines five to eight of verse one. See lyrics blacked out throughout the book because permission to print could not be gained.


  “In Song”: See NewsOne.com, Breaking News for Black America.

  “So Kanye Transformed Himself, Producer to Superstar”: See the 2003 interview at HipHopSite.com.

  “Adventures”: See line nine of verse two of West’s “Flashing Lights.”

  “Adventures”: See George Bush tell Matt Lauer that West’s comment during the Katrina fundraiser “was one of the most disgusting moments in [his] presidency.”

  “Kanye’s Circulatory System”: See public grief vs. private grief. See grieving.

  “Kanye’s Circulatory System”: See another $466 fee for a quote. See www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/arts/music/03kanye.html?_r=0.

  “On November 10th, 2007, Donda West Died”: See West’s Glow in the Dark tour.

  “Dear Donda”: See not being able to get permission from the estate. See page 52 of Raising Kanye by Donda West.

  “Three Months, to the Day, before Taylor Turned Twenty, but Kanye”: See West at the 2007 BET Hip-Hop Awards, giving away his award for best video of the year to UGK and Outkast, who he thought were more deserving.

  “Aftermath”: See “pull a Kanye” on Urban Dictionary. See most of the definitions having to do with interrupting someone, but one saying “To be in need of Midol.” Because emotional outbursts, asking for fairness, asking for things in general, is feminine. Because if you need to ask for something, you have less power. Because if you get emotional while asking for something, forget about it. See some old archetypes at work. See my hope that West’s emotional outbursts are shifting things, saying men can be emotional in the public eye. See a future where the emotional is just the emotional, not tied to gender. See no display of emotion undermined.