| | Pretentia, My Love, or Consort to a Hawk
a remembrance
When Pre (that's what I called Her then - Pre, She called me, no, not Wang, but
Wayne) and I hooked up, we were both reading at the Uptown. I was finishing
some poem where I scream at the end (don't we all?) when She walked in. I
remember Her headdress bobbing above the heads of the onlookers, a headdress
fashioned from the feathers of an extinct bird of prey (actually, it was papier
mache, but Her description elevated it to that stature). I also remember Her
smell, a kind of cross between Chanel #5, and eau-de-french-fries (to this day
I cannot enter a McDonald's without a sense of yearning).
She read Her poem, "Untitled," the ending, and our beginning:
...cover me
in your sweet,
fatty
gravy, made pungent
with
the circle of
my bottle.
sipped one
too many
times.
Oh yes, I covered Her, coveted Her, and She, in turn, took it as Her due. How
do I describe Her greatness? If we were inanimate, She would be a
superstructure designed by Le Corbusier, and I a cup designed by Dixie. Her
first words to me were, 'My friends call me Pretentia, you may call me Miss
Poette,' while proffering a hand limp as a hothouse flower trembling to fall.
I remember that first night, oh, what were Her words, Her poetics? Something to
the effect of, 'Do me baby!' To uneducated ears, this would be the unclean
keenings of horny trailer trash, but Her expert inflection and, how does one
say it? Loudness? Yes, loudness, transformed it to the level of Art. Above Art.
If Angels could sing their song would be Her voice screaming, 'Do me baby!'
We were together only briefly, but for me it was akin to a gift bestowed upon
from the gods. Most nights were spent with Her performing Her latest (I
wouldn't dare to read my own work, not next to Hers), and then, after the sound
of Her voice reading Her poetry worked Her to a froth, She would wail, 'Do me
baby', or in an inspired variation: 'Wayne, Do me baby, you is the best!' Awe
inspiring, I was simply full of awe.
The end came like all endings do, not with a shout, but with a wimper. She left
me on my birthday, at a reading at the Muddy Waters cafe. She asked everyone to
follow Her into the bathroom stall. I was anticipating Her "Scatology akin
to Astrology" poem. Instead I was blindsided by Her reading a poem
scratched on a roll of toilet paper about the end of our relationship. After
She was done, She flushed the poem, and me, down the drain. The final scene was
the toilet being stopped up, water streaming onto the floor, and Her staring
serenely at me. Her last words were, 'Wayne, I'm more woman than any one man
can expect to bear. Consider yourself dumped. Happy Birthday.' She walked out
to stunned silence, then thunderous applause.
I guess I wasn't enough for Her (can anyone be?) But I tried. Like Faulkner
wrote, 'If I can't be a hawk, then at least I can be consort to a hawk.' She
came into my life like a hurricane, left me like an earthquake. The rupture in
my heart will never heal (and I would not want it to). All I can say is that
for a brief time I was with Her, and by being with Her, I was the better for
it.
Her master stroke was that the poem was one of a kind, living forever in Her once
spoken words, but for a fragment I fished out from the porcelain, dried and
framed upon my wall: '...I am better than U/ any one of U/ I wail...'
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