Max Heinegg

Wayfinder

In Reykjavik

The mother of the goldsmith shows me the rune
beside the protective eye of awe
near the lava stone & silver necklaces
adorned by the carved teeth of whales.

She says, Here is the wayfinder
& puts it on so I may imagine
how it will look on you.

Along the walls, she has modeled
her son’s creations. In black & white,
a grandmother, still beautiful.

I hope this is where we will follow,
the way an older culture set
the symbol to stay in one place,
offering
something of the earth
that skill shaped, clasped
with a magnet to hold the rope, so
you will know where you are going
even when you don’t.

Max Heinegg is a poet, singer-songwriter, recording artist, editor, and literary critic. His previous collection, Good Harbor, won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Press. His second book of poems, Going Therre, came out in September 2023. Born in Cooperstown, NY, he lived in Schenectady, NY before moving to Medford, MA, where he has taught English in the Medford Public Schools for 25 years and is the co- founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company. Connect with him on the web at www.maxheinegg.com

Max Heinegg

Anamnesis

1.

I pushed off with permission
from the Electric City to Brooklyn.

Broome’s green & dying sedan, Big Ed,
rolled out of the slush, down I-90.

Familiar roots dozed while winter sun
lured me to a chastening,

back to the city of my childhood
from which to remember.

2.

- For R.

In his cups, my roommate, the professional dancer
could grab a subway pole & pull parallel
to the ground. He pocketed women
& vested pleasures, secreted smokes,
& taunted subway strangers with drunken melodies.
He taught himself to drum just to join the band.

For a week, he’d leave for Africa, returning with curios.

He kept his room in a way I did not understand,
owned an iron & several pairs of shoes.
19, I didn't decorate as much as find places
to deposit myself.

The day we met on 172st, we passed Washington Heights,
& the hospital where a cop was killed, then drank
good whiskey with ice. I plotted from a window how to start my life.

When we went for Chinese, we forgot our wallets.

His roommate, who granted me a couch,
listened only to Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing.
“Ironbound” grew on me.
Addled, I wore out Alice in Chains’s Dirt on headphones,
drawn to Staley’s snarl while they slept.

That winter we traipsed through the beehive
of the East village, lost, from the Bank to Brownie’s,
earshot from pleasure, next door to debauch,
lining up the powders of Alphabet City.

All along, I was instinct’s passenger,
pointed towards the sun,
a guest who cracked his nest egg
for breakfast with the city.

3.

- For H.

Hey you old junkie, where the fuck are you?
I'm guessing Florida
& nowhere near the LES.

Where's TJ, the mustached singer of 32 Tribes,
with his penchant for divorced white ladies:
"Are you saying your man won't wreck it because he won't, or
because he can't?"
“Because he can’t.”
Damn.

Where's Gordon, king of the heroin queens,
& Gilbert, our dapper manager who held court during Cafe con Leche
fellating the staff. At Mr. Fuji's Tropicana & later, the Fez
Under Time Cafe: Chris Robinson handing out $100 bills
eavesdropping on Shudder to Think, bringing drinks to the Mingus Big Band
& to Charles’s widow, admiring towering Johnny Cash, diminutive Johnny Depp
his chain-smoking belle Kate Moss, hanging with Jeff Buckley
before his Columbia debut, playing his Telecaster in G before the show,
meeting Jennifer Charles in the Elysian Fields
getting chastised for not refilling water fast enough
for the “actress” known as Duff.

In time, I left Harmony to his Kids,
& the Honeymoon Killers
to sole possession of Clinton St,
& you to what befell.

I left you there because I could.

4. The Busboy Notes

To use until use became the sustainer
was my path to doll-raggedness,
then the anarchist was henpecked
& I slept all day in boredom’s blue chair.

When Fellini and Phoenix fell
on Halloween, I was waiting to catch the F train
to get to 2nd Ave and cop,
to pick up my pressed shirts & walk to work.

The bones of my feet envied birds
making tips on the ground floor of the Fez, NYC.
The actual fez hung above the bar
that I fed ice & fresh juices, sitting regal,

as I broke through sweats, changing kegs
racking glasses, learning Spanish, trading
shifts, snagging any fallen bills.

The angel was the unexpected: Patrick
the Irish cook from the LES
who walked from a decade of powder
to poke a sober finger to my chest
saying never never to my always.

Offstage at the Fez, the Nuyorican poets
ashed out their mouths while I changed ashtrays,
returning hourly to the restroom
to ash myself out, on the banks of Lethe

after I closed the bar, I took my shift drink,
a velvet screwdriver, young teeth sweet to rot.

Tipped out in the hour of the scavenger, I walked
token in hand to the subway station,
nodding lightly
beneath a trigger of moon.

5. CBGB

My ego courted its own disgrace,
the A&R guy out the door,
my 58 in a Daltrey lasso,
dropped to signal fire,
the soundman pissed.

My curly Mohawk flopped &
The Hounds played on, fitfully
from Brooklyn to the Bowery,
swiping at the indie crown that John
Spencer only needed a finger

to gather, giving the theremin
the come-hither, as The Blues
Explosion’s drummer decimated the room-
& Foetus, that ginger satyr, joined
in, w/megaphone to command

the yearning crowd to assume the position,
climbing aboard in the dust
I haunted to possess but left
that sojourn in the country, blue-
grass, blues & other musical forms of the underground.

6. Like the Pearl String Cut

I awoke in the bed of chance
violently ill.

After my defiance was crushed
under its own pressure,
I saw we were boys then
thoughtless until the chastisement.

We met at work & soon
were skinning our knees on Ave. C.

We’d sit on his bed listening
to Frank’s Wild Years,
until the height of nights
rended us paper men.

Now I consider myself lucky
to sit in the white nutcracker,
whittling dreams from husks,
through March streets like the pearl string cut.

6. Bowery to Burnside

Lean on the image too hard
& it will cave,
even the frozen branches
content to cast shadows,
not be leveraged into the sun,
snap in spring.

A forced toast, then:
hard to feel free when you’ve always been,
so from Bowery to Burnside the choice begins.
Teach me the inside workings, the traps, poorly
painted rooms, the chipped locks, the sorn
windows, so I will want to get out.

The young & affluent erect their stages,
read their lines from addiction’s pages
these jagged actors with chip-stone jaws,
lofty shoulders like marionettes.

In the city, the winter teaches cold maneuverings
from the stupor of a Williamsburg loft party,

from the Bowery to Burnside
when the young return to hometown contrition
& awake from attic slumber to
walk old corridors
gait fashioned to a sleek Mastroianni
tipping a water glass before an unpolished vanity
no effervescence in the flute
safely back through the hallway to a music
headed, not heady

the black veneer of this darkness
lit less by Eros than by fear

7. Monday Morning

Off Church Ave, old men do cartwheels
on the asphalt of a middle school playground.
When they begin their Tai-Chi, they remove
jackets, & smooth the wrinkles out of the air.

I come courtside with Anthony, tarnished skills,
freshly inflated ball. We lay our coats & keys
on the fence beside our water & any pride,
trying to recall the form & follow through.

Our opponents are ourselves, until three
ten-year olds demand a game. They talk smack,
have handles, rebounding elbows, cursing
like those they’ve observed, but play hard, fair.

A good shoot-around follows, as pigeons, the color
of the court, flock loudly, pecking gravel for candy.
We pick up our coats & keys, the old men
put their jackets back on, smiling broadly.

They walk in time with temperament, each step
a rest, but without their hands, the air returns to
what it was before: jagged breath, these lines whose
ridges crease, whose lack of ease cuts furrows.

8. January’s Beggars

Winter off the F train, rehearsing with shadows
a closed mouth opens: morning.

I walk through Brooklyn’s neighborhoods
so close together that in a jaunt I can get
Russian, Chinese, Jamaican, or Italian food
but it’s early, so I get a bagel and coffee and the deli.

Here at Church Ave, sitting out on our porch
next door to the laundromat run by old women
I light up with Jason, freshly awoken

We watch old men pace the street-corner
in plaid caps, also smoking
who watch the local homeless, courting pigeons,
gifting words to the din of the wind.

Later that day, taking Amtrak out of the city
for the weekend, I saw a man skating on the half-iced Hudson
if he disappears, I thought, he is asking for it.

Stepping off the train, home to visit my parents
I am waiting to be combined with circumstance.

January waits with me,
palms open for what it may receive.

9. Revision

This white moth that slept
conspicuous on the trees,
bitten by the birds
is now brown as bark,
indistinguishable.

I slept soundly in the city
weaning from security
with a taste for the night's offerings
until I saw the birds circling
& could only hold the tree.

Apparently there was better prey,
or my safety net was closer.

I walked back to collegial shade,
& learned by leaving
what should remain.

10. Left Standing

Why did I ever assume
I was hollowed out
for the wind to sing through?

The wind needs neither
instrument
nor harmony.

If I had chosen to crawl
I could have come
to calmness sooner
but there was time

so I fed awhile on salvages
& waited on my instincts.
They never came.

I had only learned
what I could not remember,

so I waited,
a passenger
assuming later trains.

11.

We took few pictures then, even
wrote letters to chart our dalliance,
playing at amor fati.

I sing the surprise that every seed dies
where I drop it, failing to sink
to my knees to change the ground
of its planting. That the dark & light
birds gather, picking their way to a thorough
feast, on a morning when the spring
taunts summer, I recall and then remember,
as if it was always known

to peel at the years, from the budded
strident ego, from selves several,
to pluck at the crown until stem remains

the unconscious finger of disagreement,
the pleasurable nod, the wheel of music turned
the lover to her side, the fall into
tenderness, where we discover ourselves
in our gentle waking state, hours in the familiar song

all the vestiges and costumes, the props of the ensemble
the ambitious and fearful lies
the single, scraped, streaked, shelled,
splintered self.

Where are you now, on the kind of night I longed for
but never dreamed would arrive, the artifact
of my own splendid peace.

Max Heinegg is an English teacher in the Medford Public Schools and the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company.

His first book, Good Harbor, won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Press. His records, poems, and criticism can be found at www.maxheinegg.com 

(Early versions of some of the parts of these poems appeared in Two Cities, Blazing Stadium, and GAS.)

Max Heinegg

Sisyphus

Poets can't get enough of the boulder.
Camus, who may as well have been
a poet, said he loved that man
in the frozen multiverse can choose
to assert private meaning & justify the absurdity
of existence, laughing back at the deathless
gods, a savory bit of payback.
My students call him Syphilis.
Stop. I say, You're ruining the mood.

Back to the rock: Gluck’s icy, but she rolls it
easily. Homer’s is for Ajax to hurl, a ton weight.
A millstone only Apollo can save Hector from,
for now. I draw mine in dry erase on the wall
by the window. Erudite vandalism? More
small crimes for daily inspiration! Thinking
less of Camus than reading D’aulaires, laughing
when I read the husband/wife team wrote of the wily
king on his return to the beloved, Fooled him again!

Anything to be alive! To bask in the climb
like Alex Honnold on the staggering face
of El Capitan, smiling, granite-minded, all
long handed limberness. Utterly prepared
for the fabulous labor of his scaling.
Or in the TV Avatar, the blind earth-bender Toph,
the teacher who listens & waits, staring down the muscle-
bound Boulder, who learns a sexist is a Pebble!
Or you, my braver, showing me the mundane is not

that every day. To notice the position of the rock,
how it’s emblem also. To mark,
by contrast, the cloud-cover shadowing
it, our grit influencing the ground's give. Our days
spent hovering over what will be
our grave & time. To be taught a better attitude,
a wiser manner to manage a grief perpetual,
to wield this terrakinesis! To never tire
of the flesh, until it tires of us.

Max Heinegg lives and teaches in Medford, MA. He is the author of Good Harbor, forthcoming spring 2022, which won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Review. His work has appeared in 32 Poems, Thrush, The Cortland Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and Nimrod, among others. His new record of poetry adaptations will arrive in late 2021, and his previous solo records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com

Max Heinegg

Religion in the COVID Wing

Waking, we see her glove the door, adjusting
her cloak, light capped in the shadows
of the morning ward, her bearing the proof
of faith I have mocked my entire life

bowing to us, frightened father & child
whose fever is breaking up. What fortune
she would leave the realm of light to find us here
pinned to the bed, startled from a blanketed chair.



Godsend

The baby in the COVID wing is crying
during quiet hours. Through the glass,
I see the source, just sitting up,
the parents on both sides attending.
Knowing to be here meant it was in danger,
as my child was, in our room, because a strain
of the virus forces the heart to stop its own
& all the insurance & human eyes on micro-
scopes, & every money-driven ingenuity
cannot guard, only monitor. The child’s cries
did not pierce, because I believed it would live.
Not for innocence, or virtue, or mercy, but
for youth, a divine shield she was given
that this day guarded her life.

Max Heinegg is an English teacher and singer-songwriter who lives in Medford, MA. His recent poems appear or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Thrush, Nimrod, and Kestrel. His music can be found at

https://maxheinegg.bandcamp.com/

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

Max Heinegg

Lake House Guns

Is it ever only a toy?
Robert Bly in my ears
talking campfire men
who cry handling a sword.

I get pissed at my nephews,
firing Nerf guns, water guns, any
gun—cocking pathologically
until my daughters join the effort,

pinning a hapless cousin
in a bedroom corner. The squad
rains doom, & I think it’s good
for them—girls are better off

not taking shit from anyone.
Let them get hit & hit back,
learn to handle them.
So, I quit bitching about

guns, firing equitably—
no one’s watching them
decide what’s fair play, protest
the other child a coward.

Max Heinegg's poems have appeared locally in Nixes Mate, Pangyrus, and Ibbetson Street Review. He lives in Medford, MA, where he teaches high school English and is the co-founder of Medford Brewing Company.