Oz Wasn’t So Bad

Troubles were lemondrops for such a short time.

Regret swirled.

Pig pens bumped farmhands bumped cellar doors bumped barns

and buried her real dream in a haystack that needled her.

Only the crullers were sweet. And Toto.

There are no yellow bricks in Kansas.

A new plan stirred and tossed guilt and garden gates and longing and loyalty

in spirals like the twister that once set her free.

Miss Gulch was dead. Aunt ‘Em was dead. Dorothy was not.

A storm brewed.

Uncle Henry slipped her a twenty

and Zeke drove her to the edge of town

to find the rainbow in the dust bowl. 

In shoes not made of rubies–no air-born house, no air balloon, no pink bubble–

Dorothy stepped away from the scene in the crystal ball

and called on Mother Nature for the wind to pick up.

Odds are in Oz she could have been somebody.

Time to find out.

The girl in the pinafore has a crown to reclaim.

Say good-bye, Toto.

Maureen Mancini Amaturo, NY based fashion-beauty writer, teaches writing, leads Sound Shore Writers Group, which she founded in 2007, and produces literary events. Her fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, poetry, and comedy are widely published and appear in publications that include: The Dark Sire (nominated for Bram Stoker Award and TDS Fiction Award, 2020), Boned, Burnt Pine Magazine, The Book Smuggler’s Den, Coffin Bell Journal, Dime Show Review, Drunken Pen Writing, Every Day Fiction, Furious Gazelle, Hash Journal, Hobart Literary Magazine, Flash Non-Fiction Food Anthology (Woodhall Press,) Things That Go Bump (Sez Publishing,) Film Noir Before It Was Cool (Weasel Press,) The Year Anthology (Crack The Spine,) Points In Case, Little Old Lady Comedy. A handwriting analyst diagnosed her with an overdeveloped imagination. She’s working to live up to that.