Mr. West by Sarah Blake Page A

eyes).
    All the peristalsis.
    Even a vestigial organ.
    I love the digestive system. The bits about how long the small intestine is.
    The small intestine in an adult human measures on average
about 5 meters (16 feet), with a normal range of 3–7 meters.
    It can measure around 50% longer at autopsy
    because of the loss of smooth
    muscle tone
    after death.
    How they will go on to say,
    That’s the height of a giraffe!
    The length of a Humpback Whale calf
    at birth!
    The length of the letters individually undone in this very book!
    The length
of my
cooing for
Kanye!
    C ooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooo
    Kanye must know, from his year in China, that there,
the heart is not what controls love.
    It is the stomach, the gut,
    that which moans in the night.

SEEING KANYE
    Along the Juniata, the gray stones,
gray squares in the grass,
keep the hills from the road, keep them
where they are.
    When we pass the stones,
like the Earth’s stitches,
I know we’re about to see a rock face
following a bend in the road,
where the strata bend like sound waves.
    It’s clear God is below the Earth, not above—
his head, giant frame for the planet—
and he makes a sound that makes the Earth.
    But first I thought of Kanye’s head
singing, singing, singing into that rock.

the fallible face
    Â Â             
    KANYE WEST , “Through the Wire,” line 6 of verse 2

MYTHIC
    The world’s on the back of a turtle, on the back of a turtle, on the back of a turtle,
    on the back of Kanye.
    Eve gave Kanye the apple—after Kanye was formed of dust from the ground.
    Kanye was raised by a nymph and not eaten by his Titan father.
    With a giant axe, Kanye separated the murky Yin and clear Yang.
    Kanye once grew from the ocean and reached the clouds in the sky.
    And Kanye almost died in a car accident,
    so he became a star.

GOD CREATED NIGHT AND IT WAS NIGHT
    Let there be Kanye at the wheel of a black SUV.
Let Kanye fall asleep.
Let the SUV hit another car with another man.
Let that man’s legs break and be broken.
Let Kanye be trapped in the car.
Let there be the men that cut him out.
    And there was evening and there was morning.
    Let Kanye’s mother and girlfriend arrive.
Let the women take care of him.
Let Kanye see his face.
Let the doctor reconstruct his face.
Let Kanye have the breath of life.
Let Kanye lie that he had not fallen asleep.
    And there was evening and there was morning.
    Let Kanye tell the truth.
Let Kanye’s jaw be wired shut.
Let Kanye write a song.
Let Kanye sing it through that wire.
    Let the song reach over all the earth.
Let lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon Kanye.
    Bring forth Kanye according to his kind.

KANYE’S SKELETAL SYSTEM
    206 bones, filled with marrow, connected
by tendons, ligaments, fitted in joints,
divided into axial and appendicular skeletons.
    Bones break, fracture. They bruise. Sometimes,
kissing contusions.
    The Googled images for this show
scans and x-rays of knees, and couples kissing,
and pictures of Rihanna with Chris Brown.
    Oh god, fact-checker.
    Kanye has broken his bones.
But no matter how many places the skull
is broken, it’s only one bone breaking.
    First, a baby will have a skeleton completely
of cartilage.
    In the fourth month of pregnancy, it begins to turn to bone.
    And then I’ll hold onto those bones forever.
    Kanye, I could tell you so many more things about the bones.
I could tell you to drink your milk.
I could imagine you in the 80’s “got milk?” ads.
    That ad campaign began in 1993.
    Fact-checker, please.
    You’re no better. What are you really thinking?
    Kanye, did your mother, in her hands,
hold your broken face?
    So swollen.
Could she?

THE FALLIBLE FACE
    featuring Emmanuel Levinas
    1
    While firemen worked to get Kanye out,
    he talked with his mother on the phone,
apologized for getting himself