Self-Diagnosis

Ken Craft

The dog chewed the leather bookmark

you made me last Christmas.

I left it on the floor while reading that

book about diet and pain you bought,

as if all this can be laid at the feet

of nightshades or acidic foods or the sugar in

the chocolate truffles and cherry scones you shouldn’t

have bought from the bakery beside the bookstore.

So if it seems like I’m making shit up to get out of

clipping hedges and weeding your lovely herb

garden, or of pulling apart the damn

drier with its new tumble-dry squeak,

or of power-washing the deck and staining

it with that natural tint you chose from the color wheel,

I’m not. As proof of my dedication

to diagnosis and my innocence in losing my place,

I can report that the word “myalgia”

means “muscular pain and tenderness,

especially when diffuse and nonspecific.”

How’s that for a fancy-ass term

in lieu of real answers?

So please forgive the dog his appetite.

It wasn’t the book, at least. Just your tasty bookmark,

which must have looked to him like

a fine strip of beef jerky and tenderness.

Diffuse. Nonspecific.

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Ken Craft ‘s poems have appeared in The Writer's Almanac, Verse Daily, Plainsong, Gray's Sporting Journal, The MacGuffin, Off the Coast, Spillway, Slant, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Lost Sherpa of Happiness (Kelsay Books, 2017) and The Indifferent World (Future Cycle Press, 2016).

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