How to Make a Mink Coat
Beach Minks once lived on the Atlantic coast of North America. When Europeans settled in the New World, they went wild over the small and cute animals with red fur. They caught the minks, made leather clothes, and exported them for huge profits. By the 1880s Beach Minks became extinct. Since it is now impossible to make the highest quality coats, I’ll introduce you to the next best way.
Go to a mink farm.
They are raised in narrow cages, without an inch to move.
wo or three-year-old fur will be the most beautiful.
The leather will be the softest.
Check their eyes, and choose a mink with clean ones.
Flay its hide.
Flay it while it’s alive, because death will make it stiff.
First, seize its head, and strike it on the ground
Five times on the left, five times on the right, with equal force.
Just after it’s stunned, hang it like butchered meat and cut its four legs off.
While it’s still trembling in the air, start to pull its hide off with both hands
As if you are taking its clothes off.
Treat it as carefully as possible so it does not to die.
Sometimes you must flay its coat swiftly and resolutely.
The mink will twist its red body and cramp up.
The red body will eventually breathe its last breath.
The red body will become still.
Now, you can take out a cigarette and smoke it.
Bring the next mink.
The steps are the same. 70 minks are needed for a coat.
Flay (smoke),
Flay (smoke),
Flay (smoke).
When a coat is completed,
You take off all your skin,
nd wear the fur.
You become a cute mink.
.
.
Jeong Han-yong: poet, born in 1958, poetry 『How to Make a Mink Coat』 etc.
Translated by Seth Feldman(Canada, b. 1977) is a teacher, writer and musician
