Max Heinegg

Bio: Max Heinegg's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize, and been a finalist for the poetry prizes of Crab Creek Review, December Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Cutthroat, Rougarou Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, and Twyckenham Notes. His recent work appears in 32 Poems, Thrush, Nimrod, The Cortland Review, and Love's Executive Order. He lives and teaches English in Medford, MA, where he is the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing company, as well as a singer-songwriter and recording artist whose records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com.

Our Lady of Montreal

In the basilica, every image in my eyes from a dead hand. I’m in that darkened half-dreaming of mercy I missedbeneath Perseverance & Temperance’sten bell carillon, passing into the castleof the spirit. Everything is gifted, birth mostly. Feeling spurious, less afterforgiveness than temporal boons, shallowas my ghost will be, but boyishly wantingto earn my spurs, deserving as Percivalin Excalibur, to leap from raggednessto champion in a flat-bladed kiss. Really,I’m kin to the child imitating prayer,clasping palms on the long pews, wishing peace was a matter of falling inwith the faithful, but I know the cloudsare gated, & that my heathen’s dialectbetrays sibilance on the shibboleth,while my own children ask after the exit.

Dogtown

Were the trees always this macabre,the witch wrists of beech & pinestands so ragged when the widows &their faithful named the windings downpast the reservoir & the moraines? Babson's Italian masons left us 1950s inculcation that no longer cuts it.
COURAGE is hidden in the woods. INDUSTRY is a more level stone than SPIRITUAL POWER, but notice their closeness. INTELLIGENCE is not to take a selfie by it; Fisher says it's fine at the top. My daughter sits on IDEAS, my winsome niece on STUDY, mom's favorite.
BEON TIME allows no spaces. My first thought's Beyonce, then Beorn, then beyond. Dogtown, once dubbed for the company the animals gavewhile the men warred, winds on past where we’re willing to go. So followthe way back across the railroad, & walk
between the rails, ponds on each side, no cars in the distance. A lab is posed by LOYALTY, & it’s pleased to be pleasing. The platitudes don’t account for birth. Luck is talk of a shelter pup,not having to make false promises to a child.The Sunday path the rich planned to inspire virtue is nowhere without a map.

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