floor the Limerick Leader they were wrapped in, wiping his mouth and hands with the blanket. He looks at me,That face is all swole. Did you fall on that face? I tell him I did because there’s no use telling him anything else. He wouldn’t understand. He says,You can stay in me mother’s bed tonight. You can’t walk the streets with that face and them two red eyes in your head. He says there’s no food in the house, not a scrap of bread, and when he falls asleep I take the greasy newspaper from the floor. I lick the front page, which is all advertisements for films and dances in the city. I lick the headlines. I lick the great attacks of Patton and Montgomery in France and Germany. I lick the war in the Pacific. I lick the obituaries and the sad memorial poems, the sports pages, the market prices of eggs butter and bacon. I suck the paper till there isn’t a smidgen of grease. I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow. 296