The Shish Kebab Genocide

The Germans made certain history

would know what they did when

they stacked the Jews in camps 

before putting them in gas chambers.

Not so with the Ottoman Turks 

who slaughtered Armenians

in 1915 and for years thereafter.

More than a million Armenians died.

Today their kin live like Jews

in diaspora the world over.

Had the Turks taken time to chunk 

Armenian corpses and put them

on skewers held over a fire

struck for a festive dinner, 

the world would know today

the Ottoman feast was a holocaust

raging hot as the German slaughter

that claimed six million Jews. 

Today no pope would have to call it 

genocide when others waffle and won’t.

Donal Mahoney