From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows after Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Yvonne Sadinsky

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

after Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

I could fixate on the crater marking my left hip,

the way cellulite pricks an uneven canvas of flesh.

Or the flaps of density hanging from my arms

left to liquify through my blood stream,

trail my arteries, then coagulate under my humerus’

and solidify into masses attractive to gravity’s pull.

That flap like a penguin rather than

flutter like a hummingbird.

That can be cured with an elliptical,

a 10-pound dumb bell, and a salad.

Easier said than done-

but a clear plan, nonetheless.

To fixate any further on an affliction

in which I have the prescription

when sometimes something more

obscure surfaces, built of sorrow—

subdued with McDonalds grease

and Ben & Jerry’s quartz

is a disservice to John Koenig’s

definition in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Altschmerz

weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.

So to the backyard I go

as the Big Mac grows soggy

and Cherry Garcia no longer melts,

but suspends inert and freezer burnt.

Tasteless salad proven tastier.

To dig below buried surface level flaws—

A fresher pain that is not so fresh,

but fermented below the dirt,

the sebaceous filaments, the lard,

the adipose, the marbling, to the lean—

where the pain has atrophied muscle,

then gnawed into bone,

settling not so conspicuously within my heart,

but just deep enough to render invisible

until the prying of a liposuction wand

and the gastric balloon

of introspection.