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# Parabolas
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/parabolas/
- Published: 2026-08-28T14:31:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-28T14:31:00.000Z
- Description: “Parabolas,” 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
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Current Events, Dry Humor, Faux Lament, Hormonal - Teenage variant, Humor, Loosely Hinged, Poems, Pun-y / Tongue-in-Cheek, Unserious, Apilco, August, Black and White, Forgotten, High Summer, Invisalign, Mother Daughter Dynamics, Parabolas, Ramekin, Summer, Teenagers, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

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.