{"id":2607,"date":"2026-08-28T14:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2607"},"modified":"2026-09-09T12:13:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T12:13:28","slug":"parabolas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2607","title":{"rendered":"Parabolas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
I turn the corner and confronted, gasp, 
taking in the installation art in front of me.

Rays of thick, late morning light fall across 
a pair of translucent parabolas,
catching the dancing duo en flagrante 
as they tango in a glazed ramekin,
their glowing visages reflect 
back at the viewer the luminescence, just-so,
evoking Girl With a Pearl Earring,
if those delicate lobes Vermeer painted 
held crystal, not a sheen from the seas.

I stand back from the piece; 
seek a fresh point of view, 
all the better to further understand the work.
Shifting to my right, I look from this new vantage, 
I observe faint outer bands of velvet penubra ripple across
the candy shell surface of vitreous kiln-fired porcelain, 
the receiving vessel itself proud, stiff, glossy and impermeable.

The lovers' presence here alone casts an air of scandal
transgressive in their pairing, in their lingering, yet undaunted:
the leader drapes sultry shadows 
over the diamond brilliance of their daintier partner.

My vision blurs and clears as I squint and
cock my head, shoulder meeting ear in confusion.
The artist's message is not fully clear, 
and I never got through Art History, 
much to my Grandma's dismay.

My insufficient education notwithstanding,
but I take this dynamic sculpture to mean: 

This is a Statement. 
            We Are Here!
                     Pay Attention to Us. 
                            You Cannot Look Away.

A pair of noir stylized daisies catch my eyes.
I recall the still of a Vietnam War-era hippy holding a flower 
up to the faces of a long line of soldiers, 
themselves equipped with bayonnet-outfitted riffles,
it becomes clear as transparent, molded polymers 
rendered both personal and public,
fragile and fierce.

I see now, it is a protest piece, of course.
The pair is cha-chaing for liberty, searching for
freedom in the form of feral buccal surfaces.

Conformity to straight teeth is not the point; 
the artist and their medium conspire;
the plastic prisons of Invisalign 
will not contain her multitudes.

My own patriarchal, capitalistic, 
Westernized straightened teeth 
meet now in a grim line, 
though I take care not to grind my molars.

I raise my phone to memorialize this composition.
Then I dash off a terse text:
\"You left your Chompers. See Photo for Evidence.\"

And no.
I will not drop them off at 3rd period.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cParabolas,\u201d a short musing on the still life art left by teenagers (e.g., forgotten Invisalign retainers on the kitchen counter), written Friday, August 28, 2026 poem 240 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Black and White Photo: “Still Life: Invisalign in Apilco Ramekin,”  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,811,262,552,2145,200,1717,2,750,551],"tags":[2647,2184,2644,1314,1838,2643,244,2645,2648,134,2646],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-current-events","category-dry-humor","category-faux-lament","category-hormonal-teenage-variant","category-humor","category-loosely-hinged-2","category-poems","category-pun-y-tongue-in-cheek","category-unserious","tag-apilco","tag-august","tag-black-and-white","tag-forgotten","tag-high-summer","tag-invisalign","tag-mother-daughter-dynamics-2","tag-parabolas","tag-ramekin","tag-summer","tag-teenagers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2651,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}