Cruising with the Avatar

by Nathalie F. Anderson

His birth was looked for. All the signs foretold it.

The priests casting their bones down, counting the cracks,

playing for time. The priests casting their cards up,

tracking their rise, marking their layered collapsing.

The priests fingering the strings of their sashes,

calculating thread over threadbare. The priests

casting the feathers, tenting that whirl with dark

garments, conscious of every kamikaze

wind. The priests casting their fastidiously

fasted bodies under the fat fast–rolling

juggernaut of the stars. Yes, he was looked for.

You and I — we happily merely happened.

In all that diaphanous theophany,

no one could be quite sure what transmigrated —

Jupiter Fulminator, that blustering

thunderer, or Jupiter Tremens, shake–down

artiste. From the womb, he could have been fish–tailed

Dagon, sheepish Amon, dog–faced Anubis,

cat–faced Bast; could have washed like Aphrodite

from his father's balls, or blown like Susanoo

from his father's tainted snot. Thus like Durga,

nicknamed "Inaccessible," he found himself

not with the T'u Ti, Zemi, or Igigi,

but among the dread dii involuti —

those most hidden, thus most difficult to please.

No wonder he lay in the cradle cooing

"Hiruko," or greeted his food those first years

with the name of Ptah. Each day they tested him —

odd godkin, godling, godlet — offering him

with his oatmeal tokens of the Shining Ones

with which to declare his Grace, and, if he slept,

slipping beneath his pillow sundry symbols

to see what dreams he'd lisp to (as when, sleeping

on a circle, he'd wake crying for the mouth

of a water glass, or, sleeping on an X,

he'd wake wild as flapping birds). Was he Kala,

whose name means "weather," or Kalma, whose name means

"odor of a corpse"? Kamadeva, lord of love,

or Kamodo no Kami, exaltation

of the kitchen range? Bel or Beltis, Magog

or Gog — he could have been any one of them:

Tyr, say, who pledged his right hand to the wolf's maw,

knowing he would lose it; or Ishtar, whose lure

so infatuated the wild beasts, they swooned

into tame domestication. You and I

might try on our natures — nurse, ballerina,

cop or caterer. He moots revelation.

Keeps his own counsel. Keeps his every aspect

open. Yes, still to this day he mystifies,

each morning rising brassy, bright as Tammuz,

or before him Du'uzu, or Dumuzi

before them. He pauses on that height to shake

out his pants legs, make manifest his shirt cuffs,

transfigure his immaculated tie. Then,

like every other avatar, he crosses

down, enacting himself over the world's stage.

He eats like any man, lifts the silver spoon,

drinks the Bacchic wine. And when he traverses

the mundane street, shining despite himself, heart

after tired heart flaps wings fresh inspired

as he passes; and passersby clutch at chest

or groin or forehead — wherever hearts are kept —

never knowing how they've altered. Windows cloud

and chatter in his wake. Look inside my mouth

says Krishna to his latest human mother,

and when she does she sees herself there, living

her ordinary life inside him. But do gods

never swallow? Do they never shit us out?

Unrecognizable, he walks among us

up the gangway, past the hot tubs, to the deck

where you and I watch the sea spread before him,

his ever–ruffling table cloth, his altar cloth.