Bowl

A stack of them holed up in some cupboard,
In back of matching platters, nested soundly
In each other’s mouths.

Mouths that cannot close or even swallow
Are all they are. Inexorable lectors
In the microwave.

A stoneware lens to blind a roving Cyclops
And any telescope that finds too much
Or not enough.

Mold for a mound of anything, for carving
Craters in planets where falling stars vaporize
As they come.

The discourse of a solid with its hollow.
Both are expert in wordless paralipsis
Through simple circles.

In Tic-Tac-Toe with the Universe, it’s a stencil
To oppose our next X. She grades our shrewdness,
Aims, and pours.

A plate whose center sags beneath the infinite.
Its lips formed in a perfect zero, the one
Thing it can say.