Jennifer Loyd

Some Mothers Are As Lighthouse to Ship

All warning : No shelter.

Rachel Carson’s mother: an ill husband, no running water,
clapboards, three children, inherent intelligence, no degree.

She sold the family china, paid tuition, gave Rachel
a ledger book with inked-in cost, and instructions
to subtract every pencil and lemon ice.

If you get pregnant, you’ll be worth nothing.

Since the first daughter, whose name God forgot
to record in the bible, this has been going on—

this want of mothers

for their daughters. This selling
of china and its cabinets,

this pricing of red as pink.

If I catch you
under the stairs
with that girl again,
I’ll kill you.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Loyd is a 2020/2021 Stadler Fellow. She holds an MFA from Purdue University, where she was managing editor for Sycamore Review. She has also served as a senior editor for Copper Nickel. Her poems and prose, which explore the intersection between the private voice and public narratives, have appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Natural Bridge, New South, Colorado Gardener and elsewhere. For now, she resides in Colorado.