In 1893 Orlando Ferguson a real estate developer
combined biblical and scientific knowledge
to make a map of the flat Earth and I count
four angels at the flat Earth’s imagined corners
a fragile tissue paper hand-tinted watercolored map
a disc though we are taught in second grade
to consider the Earth a globe still one in six people
in the US of A believe they can see a straight edge
clear to the horizon where according to plan
a thick sheet of Antarctic ice keeps us all from falling
off the edge even me living in a liminal state
a widow alone in a new downtown rowhouse
my mortgage banker a megachurch member
says we will all arise reunited in the land of trumpets
others claim Ed’s soul was deposited in Asia
among beetles asps ginko trees and bodhisattvas
while in a dark Chicago bar a flat earther
approaches Ed’s son John a history major
and wants to detail for him the whole flat Earth
—
Linda Casebeer has lived and worked in Birmingham, Alabama for thirty years. She has published poems in various literary journals including Slant, Earth’s Daughters, Canary, and Hospital Drive as well as two collections of poems, The Last Eclipsed Moon and Charm and Strange.
