Fat Cats, Skinny Rats Poem by Jennifer L. Knox

The Japanese feed peas to goldfish swimming upside down
which takes hours but the green balls get gas out which is why
they swim wonky, or so says my employer. That, and
the love rat he gave Frau Kunstkrank's the toast of Stuttgart.
That, and he'd pay handsomely for a rare albino love rat—
a renowned French geneticist offered him one, then reneged
as my boss isn't a certified testing lab. "Such credentials
are easily forged," I mutter, slink home, unchain
the basement door and listen to the common ones—
sure to die unnamed, unsung—flee the reaping light.