Marisca Pichette
scarcrow
scarcrow is off to see the wizard
to beg for a new brain.
“new?” asks the wizard, stroking his admirable mustache
under a sick-green light.
“I can’t give you something
you already have.”
scarcrow flits from one straw-clawed foot
to the other, pleading its case.
“my brain is broken, lord.
when I ask it to give me love,
it delivers only pain. when I beg for silence,
only noise, noise, noise.”
the wizard of us, wizard of ours,
shakes his aged head.
“a brain’s a brain, and that brain’s yours.
don’t ask me to replace it.
why, you know there are uncounted souls
less fortunate. souls without brains at all,
souls living lives in ignorance,
fit only to wander.”
scarcrow thinks about those souls
(if they really do exist)
bliss, scarcrow thinks,
to know nothing.
heaven, scarcrow imagines,
to never, ever, think.
scarcrow flies away from the city of us,
city of ours,
out over poppy plains replete
with the dead.
if I had no brain at all,
no heart or stomach or lungs to breathe
this cultivated stench,
no eyes to know what lies beneath
flowers sown by those above—
I would be happy, scarcrow sees
at last: the wizard is always right.
but he should have granted my wish.
I have a brain—riven by regret,
dimpled with doubt.
within my feathered head
memories manifest madness.
on the other side of the world of us,
world of ours—beyond wizards
coolly pretending not to see—
there is a land of crows
scarred, ruffled, raging
for bodies with names,
bodies with hearts,
bodies beating still.
scarcrow is flying high
thinking—always thinking—
of a way to turn this broken brain
into a weapon.
_______________
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. She has published more than three hundred pieces of short fiction and poetry, appearing in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, Nightmare Magazine, and many others. Her poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Their eco-horror novella, Every Dark Cloud, is out from Ghost Orchid Press, 2026.
Author’s Backstory/Crafting Elements: I am a sucker for Oz, as it’s a world that holds glittering magic marred by many pockets of darkness. While ‘scarcrow’ began with a simple reimagining of the word ‘scarecrow,’ it became a bridge between our flawed world and the internal illogic of the wizard’s posturing. The curtain, in the end, is as insubstantial as mist.
Editor’s Comments/Image Credit: On a backdrop of poppies in the field looms over a graveyard with crows (all three images from Freepik and combined in PPT)