Sunday, September 17, 2017

Mabel and Fable



Mabel the mother had always been drab;
Fable her daughter, formidably fab:
so fab she had long since become inorganic.
Mabel looked on in a panic as Fable inhumanly
groomed herself into unnatural angles and folds
and extravagant dips, over time, as she somehow

divined in, and managed to wrench from, what
once were her hips – amid all of the other hot-house
mutant forms she’d assumed, involutedly
blooming into yet another synthetic esthetic –
which to Fable expressed jubilation! But Mabel
assessed mutilation – a doom, not a bloom,

with no room for what Mabel believed to be soul.
Then they posed for a portrait together. Expecting
to weather the shocks once again of their rocking
antitheses, ha! – their antitheses had become
intimacies, new and mild, without threat
of attack, like the unquestioned fact of a mother

and child. Who cared about theories of soul,
and their basis? Mabel and Fable had always
known homeostasis: had always been whole.
If Fable were able to make herself look like a bowl
made by Gaudi, well Mabel was glad, just as glad
as she was to remain unreservedly dowdy.


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