Brit Lit One

by Mary Turzillo

I am not responsible for your strange ideas
those of you who thought
Beowulf went gay for Hrothgar;
that you may leave to your own bright imaginings.
I only told you that Dionysus prowls
still in the Greek highlands,
that he has not cut his hair, eats acid,
frightens strangers, and will be crucified again.
But why, my credulous ones, will you believe
in yeti, Bigfoot, horoscopes, and signs,
yet will not own the Bard of Avon lived
or that he wrote those goddamned plays?


Mary Turzillo's "Mars Is no Place for Children" won her a Nebula and her story "Pride" is on the 2008 final Nebula ballot as of this writing. She has stories coming out in Cat Tales and Aoife's Kiss, plus a novelette, "Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads," in George Mann's Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. Another novelette, Ewaipanoma, will appear as a chapbook from Sam's Dot. Her novel, An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl, was serialized in Analog. Recent books include Dragon Soup, with Marge Simon, and Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, a Pushcart nominee. Two poems from Your Cat are on the Rhysling ballot. She is working on a novel, Heart's Journey, Mars Quest. She has a fascinating son, Jack Brizzi, and lives in Ohio with her brilliant Martian husband, writer Geoff Landis.


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