Stingy Jack - Max Heinegg

​Penniless, while the whiskey poured, I 
teased the Devil, Mercy comes in many forms, 
pray, become gold, so we stay wet.
As soon as Sure, his body coined & I
plucked the darkness, keeping him
with a silver cross in my pocket.

Prisoner a year, until he promised to
let me be. Freed, the Light-Bringer
turned up one night, drunk again--
two bad pennies in the Irish rain, so
I tempted the Tempter up an oak to
claim an apple

& as he bounded, I slashed a cross
into the burl of the bole, trapping him
ten years in the branches, banned
again from the garden floor. I made
him take a final pledge to never accept
my soul,

but my doom’s day came, one drink shy,
as the rain will never satisfy the heart’s
drought. My climb to St. Peter so denied,
I descended to the gate of fire, & begged
to join the shades. Yet the Devil kept his
promise,

spiting, Never, but kindly threw me a
fragment of his remorseless hearth, &
from that ash road of perdition, I grasped
& carry that small flame still. Jack o’ the
Lantern, how the light of Hell thrills.
​

Max Heinegg is the author of Good Harbor (2022), which won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize, Going There (2023), and the forthcoming chapbook Keepers of the House (2025), all on Lily Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Thrush, Matter, Nimrod, and December, among others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, won the Sidney Lanier poetry prize the Emily Stauffer poetry prize, and been a finalist for the poetry prizes of Crab Creek, Asheville Poetry Review, Twyckenham Notes, Rougarou, and Nazim Hikmet. Connect with him on the web at www.maxheinegg.com