Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
With Due Respect to Thor
Between the brake and clutch
the shrinking dog has hidden.
In the world at large, black hours are being
pearled and shafted. Something had us once;
it seems to be having
a big idea again. A tree
stands out spectacularly
branched; the mind’s eye
grows alert. This god
can hurt. Do we need
to know more? Are we sure? He pours
nine bolts into the mountain’s brain.
Heather McHugh teaches as a core faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and as a Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her most recent book is The Father of the Predicament (Wesleyan University Press, 1999), and she and her husband, Nikolai Popov, translated a book of 101 poems of Paul Celan entitled Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Wesleyan University Press, 2004). (updated 2023)
McHugh’s Eyeshot was reviewed in AGNI Online by Kevin McFadden.