Max Heinegg

Copier

   For Montag

The lounge is quiet, & the queue
over. Outside our window, a teacher’s
car circles the lot for parking but finds none.

I’m an old hand at the machine, making these
two-sided gauges of attention’s ebb.
Today, it’s Oedipus again & tragedy
for seniors who’d rather take lovers,
or cram into a car to toe the beach,
but I follow them! & stand in their sun
like a certain fireman who blasts the guests
declaiming poetry as if only

he needs love to fill the bed of faith. They, too,
are moved by waves against their will, & stumble
where raised voices cannot reach their company.


Steve Describes Infinity

  For C.B.

I met a quality control manager
from a pharmaceutical company who said
he’d gone out to lunch at a Boston Market
with his friend Steve, & as they stood in line,
they saw, in the fluorescent lights,
the stacked rows, glistening
in cages on spit rods, the Maillard change
make the aureate glow
on an endless abacus,
the birds on the level of heaven &
the birds on the level of Earth.So many
Chickens, he said—
as behind the nondescript counter,
the rotisserie chickens turn away.

Max Heinegg is a high school English teacher who lives in Medford, MA. He's the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company. He has poems coming out soon in Thrush, Nimrod, Misfit Magazine, and Stone Canoe.  He's also a singer-songwriter whose records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com