Editor's Note: Katrina is one of my friends, and lives with her cats and stuffed donkey eeyore in the Pacific Northwest.

curled up in bed hands praying under my head
i feel for my favorite curve:

starts under my arm slides down the dip of
my waist and on over my left hip diving around
my ass now slowing to sweep at last up my thigh.
rests in the crook of my knee.
simon paces the curve nightly: the forest green
keeps the claws from hurting just as those soft
black pants strong with the musty odor of small
airplanes kept my fingers

from your thigh.

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
19 june 1996

a depression is the angular distance of a celestial
object below the horizon

the world is not wrong i am wrong for this world
the world is what it was is and ever shall be
i am a star shining below its horizon

tears are a cheap constant -- my leaking psyche
won’t drown the demons. my beautiful phantoms
don't scream but whisper tiny circles don't bruise
but caress. i don't talk about them: they are mine
and not for the world

a depression is a hollow

that comforts. a dent in the world in the shape of
my body: a place to lie one with the earth to rest
when i am so tired of being so tired
so tired of being tired of being me

when i snuggle with the earth i don't stop feeling --
my emotion runs true and deep invisible to surface
dwellers and i am anchor worthy for i dare not move
steadfast for i dare not fly. the depth of my despair
grounds me more firmly than any anchor
i am going nowhere

to depress is to decrease the market value of

i am never so attractive as when swimming
in my sargasso sea of sorrow -- survival instincts
make me charming and funny: i laugh a lot and loudly
but my knuckles are white my left ear screams from
jaws clenching. i startle myself with witty responses
to droning conversations
i am perfect for everyone and no one is perfect for me
i am my own dark star and i close my doors gently
against the world -- no creaking no cracking
as the lovingly polished wood swings on well oiled hinges:
shuts in my celestial light

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
18 march 1996 revised 25 july 1996

made it from seattle to zion in a day and a half
with the detour to big rock candy mountain.
i love to drive in the desert, windows down
heat melts fingers to the steering wheel coke nearly
boils in its bottle on the dashboard:
coca-cola tastes like cinnamon when it gets really hot

drove twisting dirt roads, dead-end canyons.
a rental -- why not -- my head out the window
looking up always looking up always searching for
a place to stop and take eeyore's picture:
his vacation too yet he looked bewildered, so small
when the photos came back.

eeyore's eyes look shifty, nervous to the left,
nervous to the right. thank god he didn't have
a camera to take any of me.

in the heat of canyons the national park crush of people
i fought i fought i battled the urge to stop and strip
lay down on a big red rock naked to the sun to the sky
a sacrifice: to the desert, for being. to the german tourists
and the dutch, so they could spin myths of
buck-naked american girls drinking coca-cola,
carrying (on with) donkeys.

didn't strip but i brought home a flat red rock
and i bought myself a malibu barbie and next time
that feeling hits we're gonna have us a little
living room sacrifice. eeyore is invited.

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
undated

well, let me tell you about my day

went to the market bought: asparagus, mushrooms,
cherries, pain in the chocolate, sweet peas smelling of beauty.

waiting to cross the street to catch my bus. a big man,
a big round man, a big big round round developmentally
disabled gentleman asks for some change. i decline
like all the others on the corner but at least i smile.
so he stands behind me and declares

you have big tits. big tits. big giant tits. great big tits.
follows me chanting about my great big tits for a block,
accompanied by the sniggers of many a passerby.

finally shake him when i turn the corner --
walk toward two very short middle-aged mexican men
who take this opportunity to stare at my great big tits
while making loud and juicy kissy noises at me.

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
18 september 1995
rev 5 august 1996

you called me in the middle of the night from liberal kansas

you only had a dollar to get back to california: air cost
twenty five cents a shot and your tire had a slow leak
but you didn't seem too concerned

just excited to tell me you were standing outside
dorothy's house -- you wanted to take a picture of it
for me but it was too dark and you didn't have a flash.

i love you.

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
may 1996

i am having an unbearably sad moment so i am trying really hard to find things to make
me smile and of course i thought of you and on top of that i have finally found a really
cool reason to keep smoking other than it may kill me early and that is that i can now do
the zippo lighter trick that harvey keitel did in pulp fiction you know the one where he
starts the lighter by snapping his fingers -- i broke a nail the first time i tried it but now i
can usually do it in three snaps or less maybe it will get me somewhere or someone.
goodnight sweetheart,

k.

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
june 1996

for two years they made me
wear a uniform to school
assuring me that it cut down
on cutthroat teenage competition
would make me fit in

as if a blue gray skirt and a
white blouse could hide my
six foot frame and my
american accent

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
20 may 1996

with the colors and the cuts
of our clothes dictated
we competed in the arena of
skirtlength and footwear

leaving me with a passion
for undressing in front of
auburn haired girls in short skirts
and white strappy
sandals

it was hot there

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
undated

all the cute bras, the ones i really wanted
to wear hoping they would show through
white blouses -- the lacy ones midnight blue
satins apricot florals black strapless bustiers --
all made for the itty bitty titty girls

so whenever i could i shunned the guidance
of utilitarian white industrial strength elastic
seams across binding cups more hooks than
a tackle box -- shed the cage that would have
contained my want

bounced my way through teen ages displaying
my need -- defying gravity for the moment

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
28 may 1996

i don't know nothin bout no random drive-by flowerings
but let me tell you bout nonrandom acts of kindnessnot
yellow roses lose their beauty when left on the living
room floor the door in splinters red when beheaded and
left on the bed

and yes there are worse things

after the pinches sterling may well have complemented
the purple and green black blue but i usually settled
for a matched set of slurred sorry and scrambled
eggs served in bed

only the best

go ahead drive me by comic me book me fill in my gaps

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
13 september 1996

my eyes burn desire lines into newsprint
travel over words in black and white --
as if it made them clear, made them true
horoscopes are like the weather forecast

i want to believe i won't need the umbrella
will fall in love

can leave the sweater at home

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
16 february 1997

every three months i get a letter
on tissue thin blue paper written
in handwriting that i can barely make out
but in every one i can find the phrases
i hope you find a good man
and
thank god you have a good job

and i'm glad that she doesn't know that
the company i work for is going under

and i'm sad that we fell in love
and i'm sad that we didn't
because i'd like her to die thinking

i was happy

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
undated

lately i watch women -- lines
of legs, thrusts of breasts,
curves catching winter sun

they parade again before my eyes
as i lay bound to the bed spread
open to their fantasy

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
february 1998

katrina grace craig
issaquah washington
march 1998