Parabolas

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.