Mr. West Read Free Page A

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:
    â€œI 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
    â€¦ 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