Poet Republik Ltd’s chose as its first micro-press publication, J. Hope Stein’s collection of poetry, Occasionally, I Remove Your Brain through your Nose. No spoiler alert, but there’s something going on in this collection that is a kind of petroglyph for the times we are living through. These poems are original, experiential and vital. Read on….
Occasionally, I remove your brain through your nose
Sure, I’ve thought about fucking you in my desk chair, silently not to disturb the neatness of your yellow summer shorts. Silently, not to disturb our colleagues in surrounding cubicles. You putting small paperclips in my hair, your hands suggesting the rocking of my skull. Me straddling your lap, your bare ass in my desk chair, shapes suctioning into each other— We would continue to make the sounds of good business. A conference call with Coca-Cola, an email to Citibank, a spreadsheet of year-over-year gross profits. Me elevated in your lap, my face clearing just over the cubicle partition, just visible enough across the office, my expression dismembered like a poet who’s fallen out of favor with her king.
J. Hope Stein is a secret poet living in Brooklyn. To read another poem from her collection, Ted & Sylvia, go here Lenny Letter
To read “I Raise a Toast to the Car Seat on My Bathroom Floor” go to Jessica Grose’s excellently curated, “How Motherhood Changed My..” in the Mother’s Day edition of The New York Times
Occasionally, I Remove Your Brain Through your Nose, by J. Hope Stein. Her poems are published in Lenny Letter, The New Yorker, Verse, HTML Giant, Tarpaulin Sky, Everyday Genius, Ping-Pong, Talisman, and Poetry International. She was an associate producer on the film Sleepwalk with Me and a consulting producer on the film Don’t Think Twice. Her latest writing can be seen in The New One. For the New York Times review of The New One on Broadway go here To preorder The New One: Painfully true stories from a Reluctant Dad, with Poems by J. Hope Stein go here.
The New One: Painfully true stories from a Reluctant Dad, with Poems by J. Hope Stein can be purchased on audible here in bookstores June 16th.
J. Hope Stein’s latest poetry collection is The Little Astronaut. Proceeds from the sale go to Every Mother Counts
