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.

.