Scotty Lewis

Scotty Lewis holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Arkansas, where he teaches College Literacy for UCA’s Department of Student Transitions. He and his corgi companion, Olive, spend their time out of the classroom roaming the Ouachitas, the Ozarks, and all of the woods, streams, and swamps that lie between. He is the author of the lyric-epic Arkansas Ghoulash. His other work appears in The Banyan Review, Arkansas Life, The Meadow, Bear Review, the Toad Suck Review, The Best of Toad Suck Review, and Investigative Creative Writing: Teaching and Practice by Mark Spitzer.

A Traveler's Sewing Kit

Palm-sized gold lamé topped by two brass fingerspoised to snap out a drum major’s cadence. We marched through Central Park lugginghundreds of them, then boarded a planeback to Arkansas.
                                      Inside three needlesrest next to a threader, a tiny scissors,mother of pearl buttons and pewter snapsfastened to a card.
Things for putting things back together in my mother’s sewing room.
                    I spent hours there as a child  trying on my cousins’ Easter dresses, learningthe water-wristed skill of the baton,wearing ornamental sequins.
                                                                       Green assprinkles on Christmas cookies, I wantedto be the daughter she always wanted.
I knew some forceful language touched her, spelled out on the naked bottoms of hereyelids, lettered in secrets and terrifiedof silence.

                     Some verb now sends us to the loomweaving and untangling what we can,still eager to cover all our parts.

Scotty Lewis

A Traveler's Sewing Kit

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