Nabokov's "The Original of Laura" & My "FLaura"

I've had The Original of Laura in my closet for some while. Maybe even a year. I read Nabokov's Verses and Versions and reread Pale Fire first; I read a whole lot of other stuff before finally deciding to dig in and get through it. Why? Hard to say. I suppose it's because I knew it wasn't a finished product. I suppose it's because he himself wanted it to be burned (a la the book burning in Pale Fire). I suppose it's because I knew from reviews that it wasn't the Nabokov I knew and loved.

It'll be a quick read: it's more package than content. One index card per page (writing only on one side). It's terribly unfinished.

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There's lots of reviews (mostly mixed) out there re the book and "Dmitri's Dilemma." Though I love much of Nabokov's oeuvre, and I'm sure Laura (hobbling Laura) will have some "zings," I found myself pretty much in accord with this:

http://www.mantex.co.uk/2010/01/08/the-original-of-laura/

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I guess this will be a good place to insert my poem related to/inspired by Laura. As soon as I heard about the sketchy novel's existence, and its pending publication, I wrote this poem (I'd have to backtrack to find the article that inspired me and some of the details -- though it's been years since I wrote this poem, I'm thinking now that the after-painting below must've been dancing in my head.) The poem was never published published, so what can it hurt.

FLaura

Tenacious: you bet.  Like muskrats guarding their musk.  Dying is fun and we wanted to know the authorial order of the index cards

Swiss vault: Séance

Banner (letters inked in blue neon): DIRECTION, PLEASE   

Once the lights were off, the thirty cards in question turned a ghastly green, the table lifted, and a telegraphic clicking, issuing from and muffled by a luminous cloud above the table, clacked to no decipherable end

On auto-shuffle, the cards dealt themselves into a ménage à trois of narrative fans, pausing between hands only long enough for me to jot down scant synoptic features:

1. Phil, an ageing writer of large note and a hatha yogi, is erasing himself from the toes up     
2. Phil, an ageing writer of large note and a hatha yogi, is erasing himself from the head down
3. FLaura, in an outlandish attempt to outdo Laura and Flora, playfully twitches a bared nipple while coyly gazing at her twisting sister in an oval mirror

A day later someone—apparently the Transparent Umber Umber—ethered into our e-boxes this odd little follow-up:

How fitting (or knot, ornate) that you should query me in all caps and I should answer in italics—and that a double-Dutch (double-dunce) Monkey in the Middle should play pat ball to my taps

Ecole de Fontainebleau, Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d'Estrées et de sa soeur la duchesse de Villars

vers 1594,
96 x 125 cm,
Musée du Louvre, Paris