Brittany Hause
The Martian Chronicles The Earth Men
four men from Earth
ungentlemanly
unreasonable
four angry voices
the captain and his crew
lying wildly
the captain like his men
frightful-looking
I have to tell everyone
find someone who’ll listen
the men wear masks
pleasant masks
masks that smile
The men want Mars
They see it as a toy
_______________
Brittany Hause is a linguist who also happens to write SFF. Their speculative poetry has appeared in Star*Line, Grievous Angel, and other places.
Editor’s Notes: This poem is part of the “Martian Chronicler” series of erasure poems, which are drawn from different pieces in Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collection, The Martian Chronicles. Brittany used watercolors, ink pen, and Microsoft Paint to block out some words and spotlight others. She said, “My intention in creating the poems in this series has been to craft narratives from the perspective of a non-human character (speaking from within a non-Earthly culture) out of stories told from a primarily human (and exoticizing/colonizing) point of view. As a result, the poems bear little resemblance to the source texts in theme and tone, sometimes running directly counter to the plot lines or assumptions of the original stories.”
As editor, I suggested the erasure poem be arranged on the page (preserving the order of appearance in the original text) as is shown here. This method of presentation is one of the options in presenting an erasure poem.
