Monday, January 20, 2014

A CAT WHO LOOKS LIKE HITLER

by Chris O’Carroll


Image source: Cats That Look Like Hitler


Your kitten’s face is white with a black patch,
A toothbrush mustache, underneath the nose.
You named the little furball Adolf, natch.
(You could have gone with Chaplin, I suppose.)
Since cats cleave to no ideology
That one could label pro- or anti-Jew,
And are not really into irony,
What the name signifies depends on you.
It could be just a joke about a face
That seems as comical as monstrous now,
Could be a shout-out to the Master Race
That operated Auschwitz-Birkenau.
  The eponym enjoyed such baneful fame,
  It’s hard to know what’s in a namesake’s name.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous appearances in The New Verse News, he has published poems in Angle, Folly, Light, The Rotary Dial, Snakeskin, and other print and online journals.