Scotty Lewis

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 wind
A wagging lock of orange ribbon flies loose
An emblem of direction, effortless and thin
The open lake takes swimming lessons from the wind
As we try to paddle forward, our bodies play like sails carrying us behind
A drowning cypress, a starving pelican wears a limb-line like a noose
The open lake takes swimming lessons from the wind
A wagging lock of orange ribbon flies loose

Latch key

I count out Mississippi’s to the space
between us, and Arkansaws for the path
careening to you. Bicycle tires – Red
clay fattening the tread. I thrust my waist
forward where the half-domesticated
acres atrophy beneath a speckled
graft of asphalt. The yearning wheel lets go
the mud between its teeth, picks up speed. Foot
over foot of yonder. A mother’s hand
yanks the cast iron bell, pealing afternoon
to twilight. A summer’s last hours stick
to the backs of our throats. Mosquitos’ wings
scratch. Fireflies play stories on the dark drape.
And we pray that nothing ever brings us close.

Point Remove

A slurry of bronze light jettisons
the last sticks of winter
splintered, rotten things
pushing through the button brush

under the chatter of belted kingfishers
rousted from their burrows
by three days of rain. A limp beaver tries
to hoist its carcass higher up a mockernut

or seems so, as a branch
bowing in the runoff limbo
dips low but refuses
baptism to the already dead

silence and interruption
from a Buick 6 glue together
the steel wool leavings
of a chin and jaw

the rolled down window begs
tidings of the bite
suspicious, we think, of us
who dare the ruckus

with a gossamer of woven
threads, copper in a fetal arc
sounding the eddies
for subtle tugs of life

I cast my eyes from him
onto the wet turf
where blooms of stitchwort
raise goosebumps in the clover

Nothing is my answer
or maybe eel
stripes of licorice
overlaying gold

one I think
caught himself in high
water foraging for worms
waited through a tide

warmth nudging out
the glower of early March
felt like I feel
the urge of reptile vestiges

basking in our skins
looking closer
its muscles contracted
to a slither

a sudden fear banking
fog over its gaze
its stillness holds
a dagger’s gouge behind the gills.

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