Scarecrow Wishes for a (Dorothy) Gale

by Marceline White

Mateusz Raczynski

She lost her shoes in the last goddamned storm, wind came through ripped them right off her feet, now they seed the fields somewhere far beyond her sightline. Her socks flap in the breeze, stripes warn away raccoons, frighten the deer. But she’s been out here on these Plains for too long, by herself for too long. She’s been lonesome from harvest moon to strawberry moon, hanging around by herself with no company to keep except the cawing of the blue-hawks and the loud scrabbling of crows. She is falling apart, hair once like corn silk is now rough straw. She once was full and round, back when hay turned to gold she shone straight across pale wheat fields, sunbright and beautiful. But now, she is tired: of the wind, the rain, even the sun — all the elements beating her down, taking it out of her. And the crows, a goddamned murder of them, stealing her buttons & bringing her others discards in return. She doesn’t scare them, she doesn’t even try. She likes having them around. Hell, they worship her — in all her deflated glory, her shoeless wonder. They drop shiny trinkets where her feet should be, tuck pink plastic beads into ears of corn, affix stars to sheafs of wheat. Yonder, she sees the farmer walk to worship his scarecrow god affixed in front of the white building on the hill. Wishes he would worship her the way he prays to him. At least she used to protect the harvest. What did he ever do for this plain land? She furrows her face, wheat springing from her brow. She’ll stick with the crows. They hang onto her shoulders, perch on her head, their loud chirping a nightly song. She waves her arms, catches the wind in her palms, dances under an ocean of dying stars.

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A recent Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Marceline White’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Culinary Origami, The Heartland Review, Press 53, Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art, Harpy Hybrid, Scrawl Place, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, Snapdragon, Little Patuxent Review, Please See Me, Quaranzine, Gingerbread House, The Free State Review, and The Loch Raven Review and others; anthologies include Ancient Party: Collaborations in Baltimore, 2000–2010, and Life in Me Like Grass on Fire. She spends time taking too many pictures in her garden, finding new recipes for her CSA share, serving her two cats, and telling her son to text her before he arrives at the party.