Mr. West Read Online Free Page A

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?
    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.
    â€œI’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—
    â€œ 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