Doing Time on Planet Billy Bob Our poet takes a summer trip to Benton, Arkansas, where the movie SLING BLADE was filmed, and fulfils her vacation in the company of a complete stranger, all while recuperating from chemotherapy and radiation treatment for breast cancer.  The odyssey forges a cherished friendship with the stranger and thousands of cicadas.

The Essential Girl Set to music composed in the moment and recorded during the week following 9/11, this collection consolidates the author’s attempts to understand why she is bright, female, and so damned weird.  She thinks her singularity is a practical joke God played on her. She won’t know she is autistic for another 5 years.

You can buy The Essential Girl directly from the author at poetamelie@aol.com.

Hebiko Ampersand: A Little Snake’s Story 

 This is my story. 

 It began with a cruelty. 

 I, Friend Snake, was a baby garter 

 who found herself inside 

 a grade school terrarium, 

 surrounded by children. 

 Spring break was approaching, 

 and the teacher had decided 

 to leave Friend Snake 

 in her terrarium to starve to death 

 over the Christmas holidays. 

 Friend Sage, a classroom aide, 

 heard of this, came running, 

 and snatched Friend Snake up, 

 sparing her a lonesome death. 

 Friend Sage gave Friend Snake 

 a new glass house 

 and a conch shell 

 for sleeping quarters. 

 It was nice. 

 Friend Snake was a beautiful thing. 

 Green and red threads forged 

 the beaded tartan border of her skin. 

 If you held Friend Snake between your hands, 

 she would relax and drape herself 

 between your fingers, making herself 

 a cat’s crade, a pretzel, a treble clef, 

 an ampersand. 

 Friend Sage named her Hebiko Ampersand. 

 Hebiko is Japanese for pretty snake. 

 In Sage’s hands, Hebiko curled 

 and doubled back on herself in beauty. 

 She sought the warm curtain of Sage’s hairline 

 as she gathered herself like knitting 

 on Sage’s left breast to listen to 

the gentle, low music beneath 

 her clavicle. She traveled in the hood 

 of Sage’s sweatshirt, nestled in her lap, 

 dangled around her neck as 

 Sage fed and tended to her other pets– 

 the frogs and tortoise, river snails and tetra fish.

Snakes do not often get to feel love. 

 Hebiko, Friend Snake, knew love 

 because Sage would write to friends 

 on her computer and say of Hebiko, 

 “I love her.” 

 And she loved her little Ampersand 

 until one morning, when Friend Snake 

 unfurled from her conch shell bed 

 to breathe her last in her cozy glass house. 

 Friend Sage was bereft. She felt ashamed. 

 She did not know how to save a little snake. 

 This is what Hebiko wants to say to Sage now.

 “This morning, you found me 

 on the floor of my glass home 

 bleeding from the mouth. 

 You thought it was your fault. 

 You thought you had broken me. 

 With a worm or with a word, 

 you thought you have broken me 

 been stupid or not treated me 

 with enough respect. 

 This is not what happened, Friend Sage. 

 I caught a common lung infection. 

 And then it was my time. 

 You loved me. You held me over the warm, 

 low music beneath your clavicle, 

 and you poured all your tears 

 into saving me. I could not be saved. 

 But you loved me, which was saving enough. 

 I had a lesson to teach you 

 and a lesson to learn from you, 

 and these are the lessons, 

 so listen carefully, my Friend Sage: 

 It is no more the length of my life 

 than the length of my body 

 that made the measure of my love for you. 

 It is enough that you broke 

 the frozen ground with your bare fingers, 

 splitting your nails to find me night crawlers 

 in winter for my favorite treats. 

 It is enough that you heard me call for you 

 from my prison at the school 

 and came for me. 

 It is enough that you made 

 a space for a tiny snake in a heart 

 still broken by the deaths of Dog Friend Chester 

 and Old Friends Jack and Scott. 

 It is enough that you loved me. 

 Please let it be enough that I loved you. 

 Please let it be enough that, 

 as I ceased to breathe, I felt your music 

 and heat pass into me and through me, 

 that I could taste your tears in the air, 

 and I knew they were for me. 

 Most serpents do not get to know God 

 because they do not get to know people, 

 nor do they want to know people. 

 Through you, I know God. 

 Because of you, 

 God now carries my soul 

 like a cat’s cradle in his hands 

 to that bright, unbroken place 

 where no cry unto heaven 

 not even yours for your pretty snake, 

 goes unheard. 

 Because of you, Friend Sage. 

 Because of you.”