Max Heinegg

Cornerman

I talk about the wake we’re off to
with a colleague who reshaped herself
by boxing, dropping her husband along
the way. She cooks the envy of the table,
& at lunches talks the fullness of our circle,
how our shitty students have grown
up to be shitty adults. She tells me
she's seen more than he needed to
from one who's a cop now. Dick pics
are the new mixtapes, she says.
My cell phone autocorrects this childish
dick to dock, but it’s not funny
to think about him, training to control,
striding his shepherd through our neighborhood,
his father all kindness at the market,
as I marvel at the ways we fail each other.

 

Hunger

Chekhov tells the story
of a boy starving beside his father,
too embarrassed to ask
for money outside a tony restaurant,
where an inside placard illuminates
a word whose mystery makes the boy call
for Oysters!
though he has never had one.

Pitied, rich men indulge, then mock
the little beggar grinding shells.

Tonight, I saw a crow in the yard, 
balanced on our electrical,
and I thought of my father
translating for a magazine byline
few would read, the once Jesuit
penning against religion
with a riskless ease.

After he passed, I returned
to prepare the house for visitors.
and cleaned his office, my old bedroom.
Posters replaced with esoteric texts,
drawers full of medications,
closet of rotgut.
A plotted destruction of the body
he valued the mind over.
Why did he never ask for help?

 

Max Heinegg is a high school teacher, a recording artist, and the co-owner and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company in MA. His books, Going There, and Good Harbor, have been published by Lily Poetry Press and you can find him on the web at www.maxheinegg.com