The Banyan Review: Scotty Lewis, Issue 3 Elements

Bio: 
Scotty Lewis hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Arkansas, where he teaches First Year Writing for UCA’s School of Communication. 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 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.

Paddling

The open lake takes swimming lessons from the windA wagging lock of orange ribbon flies looseAn emblem of direction, effortless and thinThe open lake takes swimming lessons from the windAs we try to paddle forward, our bodies play like sails carrying us behindA drowning cypress, a starving pelican wears a limb-line like a nooseThe open lake takes swimming lessons from the windA wagging lock of orange ribbon flies loose

Latch key 

I count out Mississippi’s to the space between us, and Arkansaws for the pathcareening to you. Bicycle tires – Red clay fattening the tread. I thrust my waistforward where the half-domesticated acres atrophy beneath a speckled graft of asphalt. The yearning wheel lets gothe mud between its teeth, picks up speed. Footover foot of yonder. A mother’s handyanks the cast iron bell, pealing afternoonto twilight. A summer’s last hours stickto the backs of our throats. Mosquitos’ wingsscratch. Fireflies play stories on the dark drape.And we pray that nothing ever brings us close.

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A slurry of bronze light jettisonsthe last sticks of wintersplintered, rotten thingspushing through the button brush
under the chatter of belted kingfishersrousted from their burrows by three days of rain. A limp beaver triesto hoist its carcass higher up a mockernut
or seems so, as a branchbowing in the runoff limbodips low but refusesbaptism to the already dead
silence and interruptionfrom a Buick 6 glue togetherthe steel wool leavingsof a chin and jaw
the rolled down window begstidings of the bitesuspicious, we think, of uswho dare the ruckus
with a gossamer of woventhreads, copper in a fetal arcsounding the eddiesfor subtle tugs of life
I cast my eyes from himonto the wet turfwhere blooms of stitchwortraise goosebumps in the clover
Nothing is my answeror maybe eelstripes of licoriceoverlaying gold
one I thinkcaught himself in highwater foraging for wormswaited through a tide
warmth nudging outthe glower of early Marchfelt like I feelthe urge of reptile vestiges
basking in our skinslooking closerits muscles contractedto a slither
a sudden fear bankingfog over its gazeits stillness holdsa dagger’s gouge behind the gills.

Scotty Lewis

Paddling

Latch key

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