Corso, "The Mad Yak"


Corso began publishing in 1955, when his early poems, first published in the Harvard Advocate, were pritned in a volume titled The Vestal Lady of Brattle and Other Poems, financed by Harvard and Radcliffe students. Three years later, City Lights Books (Ferlinghetti's store and publishing venture) of San Francisco published "Gasoline," which included "The Mad Yak" among other poems. The long poem appearing in the shape of an atomic bomb mushroom cloud, Bomb, was published as a broadside by City Lights in 1958, and was written at the Beat Hotel in Paris.


THE MAD YAK

I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get from me.
They are waiting for me to die;
They want to make buttons out of my bones.
Where are my sisters and brothers?
That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap.
And that idiot student of his -- I never saw that muffler before.
Poor uncle, he lets them load him.
How sad he is, how tired!
I wonder what they'll do with his bones?
And that beautiful tail!
How many shoelaces will they make of that!


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Last modified: Wednesday, 18-Jul-2007 16:27:19 EDT