MEET ME ON THE BARRICADES

EAST SIDE NOVELIST
In a smart, newly purchased tweed
suit
We were caught in the trap of poverty. The
agony of it! ‘Three hundred and nine pages of it!
We lived in degradation and filth.
In simple wonder, like a child
Did God make bedbugs?
GOD
Interrupted, as he marks a sparrow’s
fall
What was that?
EAST SIDE NOVELIST
To God
Did you or did you not make bedbugs? And no
theological hairsplitting, please.
aim
, Petulantly
Why am I continuously being asked these silly
questions? Blake asked me the same question about
tigers. Yes, I made tigers, bedbugs and East Side
novelists. I also made sunsets, flowers, the Fal-
lopian tubes, love, children, Niagara Falls, Bach,
Kennebec salmon, rainbows, the Grand Canyon,
Shakespeare, and filet mignon. . . .
Wearily

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