by Mary A. Turzillo
Forensic physician Watson
and historian Galluci
want to dig up Galileo.
They want to go to Florence,
open his crypt in San Croce Basilica,
disturb the hero-heretic's ghost.
They want to interrogate his dead eyeballs,
to inquisition his DNA. They question
why he said Saturn had ears.
Saturn has rings, they say, rings!
How could you think ears?
It must be -- well they have their theories.
Unilateral myopia maybe.
Inflamed middle eye. Or, get this:
creeping angle closure glaucoma.
Poor Galileo! Where the hell were they
when he was squinting at blurred images?
Or, as for that, when the Inquisitors shut him up?
And, get this: they need the Vatican's fiat
to bless their resurrectionist scheme.
Ah, Galileo! Is it poetic injustice
the Church has charge of your dead eyes?
Or will you have the last laugh
knowing the Pope might say no?
Mary Turzillo's “Mars Is no Place for Children” won the 1999 Nebula, and An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, her first novel, appeared in Analog. Among other magazines, Asimov's, F& SF, Cat Tales, Interzone, SF Age, Weird Tales, Oceans of the Mind, Electric Velocipede, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet have published her fiction and poetry. Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, her poetry collection, will appear from vanZeno press this year. An Emeritus Professor at Kent State University, she founded Cajun Sushi Hamsters and has taught in NASA's Science through Arts. Her favorite people include her son, Jack Brizzi, Jr., and her husband, writer-scientist Geoffrey A. Landis.
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