A poem on indigenous themes by Jennifer Reeser

Hidatsa Scarecrow Woman

• My “wicked” scheme to scare the crow:
• alongside Scattered Corn, I, Turtle,
• prepare balled skins of deer,
• clad in a kirtle.

• Two gangly sticks for legs I pound
• across the hills of bean and squash.
• Whatever crimes they might contrive,
• I quash.

• To these, two sticks for arms I lash
• beneath the scrap hides used for heads,
• with split deer entrails intertwined
• by threads.

• The Mapi—solar flowers—fence
• our garden with its ragged vagrants;
• but still, they bring the bees from sedge
• sans fragrance.

• My father was a fine corn priest.
• My best creations are my worst—
• for feasts sometimes depend
• on the accursed.

Jennifer Reeser is a poet, critic, and a translator of French and Russian literature. Her sonnet in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 appeared in her 2012 volume Sonnets from the Dark Lady & Other Poems. Her most recent book is Indigenous: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2018).