[Mary]:, J. Hope Stein

[Mary]: cover art by David E. Stein

“The sky,” she said, “is a vast sexy nothing.
Makes you so tiny, you want to fuck.”
& the Inventor fed the woman berries but she debated
& they burst into purple on her lips & skin.

Now, the Inventor held the woman’s face
as though he were about to gulp
But he did not gulp—
& with his forefinger, tickled under her chin.

“What do you want?”
“Laughter.”
“I have no laughter,” said the woman—
Her hands were tied to a maple at the wrists.
The Inventor tickled again
& the woman felt the slow reluctant sap in her hair.

—No laughter.

-- "The Inventor Dreams of a Woman", from [Mary]:



About J. Hope Stein

J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks [Talking Doll]: (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), and Corner Office (h_ngm_n, 2011). Her full length manuscript The Inventor’s Last Breath, which is loosely based on Thomas Edison, was a finalist in the Alice James Books 2011 Kinereth Awards and her chapbook Light’s Golden Jubilee was a finalist in the 2011 Ahsahta Chapbook Contest. She contributes work to Ping Pong, Web del Sol, movingpoems.com and Poetry International. J. Hope Stein is also the editor of PoetryCrush.com and the author of the poetry/humor site eecattings.com.

[Mary]: is the 3rd installation of a mixed media project called “The Inventor’s Last Breath,” which includes a 10-minute film that premiered at the Henry Miller Library in 2011, and the chapbook [Talking Doll]: which was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. The Inventor’s Last Breath gets its title from Thomas Edison’s last breath, which was supposedly captured in a test tube and is on display at the Ford Museum in the Michigan. The next installation of the Inventor’s Last Breath, a digital exploration of the lyric voice in American newspaper during the span of Edison’s life (from the American Civil War to the Great Depression) will appear at jhopestein.wordpress.com.