Max Heinegg

Gillespie Street

You drive the car your parents tempted you with
to stay local. I return from the city, clean & dreaming.
One night, you buy a brown velvet shirt & decide
to catch me. Weeks on Gillespie Street, earshot
from college, we watch Eat Drink Man Woman,
Tampopo, 8½ because our friends say we should
& tiptoe, saying Asa Nisi Masa. We’re twenty,
mostly naked. Your glassy roommate sleeps while
you teach me to cook, caramelize onions. I sign notes
Leroi, for Jim Croce & Amiri. Your single bed
is three feet away from the candled window. Mornings,
bitter, we tune in & let the radio spoon us sugar.

Max Heinegg is a high school teacher in Medford, MA and the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company, (www.mbrewing.com). His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, Columbia Poetry Review, among others. As a singer-songwriter, his music can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com