Portrait with Bread and Cat
She's turned her head, so what the camera shoots
is half a face-large nose, dark curls, a fist
of bread. Dress stretched over knees, stockings
slumped, she sits on concrete, hunched or lumped,
the cat alert on its hind legs beside her.
It wears an unexpected rhinestone collar,
is poised to spring beyond the frame. A domed
church is in the background, like a great
square layer cake, its dollop of meringue
stiff above the crumbled paving stones.
This woman could be anyone but she's
herself, as nameless as a soldier, stuck
in a smudge of newsprint, bread suspended.
Can her country be the world when her scrap
of the planet has been shaken, a rug left out
to air? She might be wondering how to sweep
her kitchen now the broom's regular corner
has been mortared; where they've drawn the border
this time; if the cat will choose to stay,
or when the second loaf will come her way.
