Ptolemaic
by Lois Marie Harrod
Ptolemy didn’t need
a telescope to ascertain
what most believed—
all revolved
around their private ball of dust,
each mind a universe
focused on one and only,
a truth babies
know at birth
and few forget
as they grow older
though a Copernican
saint or two
claims it possible
to love beyond
and that the survival
of the individual
may depend
on the heresy
that not one of us
is the sole center
of all creation.
Lois Marie Harrod’s most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appears in May, 2016. Her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and her 13th and 14th poetry collections, Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.
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