ST. CHARLES SCARECROW FEST

by Len Krisak

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Their gestures in the eye of day, as day
Dives down on city square, on booth, and hay
Bale, speak of an assured security—
The leisure of a rigorous content
Beneath the sun. The corn crop in, no crows
In sight, these straw men loll, the main event
In what one town in Illinois, now free
Of corvine threat, declares a comic fair.
A hundred businesses display their flair
For groaning puns. Stuffed effigies that pose
And preen are grinning, smirking, satisfied
To model what their makers view with pride:
Two hundred pairs of harvest hands down-turned,
At rest, set free. And waiting to be burned.

Len Krisak

Len Krisak’s most recent books are Afterimage (original poems, Measure Press) and two translations, Ovid’s Erotic Poems (University of Pennsylvania Press) and the complete Carmina of Catullus (Carcanet, UK). With work in the Hudson, Sewanee, Antioch, PN, and Southwest Reviews, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Frost Prizes, and is a four-time champion on Jeopardy!

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