Jennifer Loyd

Rachel Carson Leaves Springdale, PA for The Sea

Most nights the moon
isn’t full. Rain in degrees

of hard and rage.

Field edges, failed
beans. Houses in various states

of disrepair and loved—

wood pile slid sideways,
seed heads left

to nod at winter.

And the pastor insisting
we were created

in Sunday’s image.

On the coldest days,
a frozen dust trails behind a truck bound

for the glue-factory. It
whitens the cargo
of old horses.

Soon enough, the girl will be
reading letters from home, pulping them
into her morning oats.

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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.