Heather Mchugh

Heather McHugh was born in San Diego in 1948 and raised in Virginia. She studied at Harvard University. McHugh was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant in 2009 for her work as a poet, an essayist, and a translator. “Auto” is from her collection Hinge and Sign, published in 1994.

At first, the mobiles were for multitudes—

the horse was doubled, then redoubled;

way and station made for

social arts, within which

5

conversations, trains of thought,

held sway. Today

I drive morosely and alone, like half

a billion others, each

in a glassed-in,

10

speakered-up

contraption, each

with a brain she thinks

she can control (it goes off

on its own, on detours

15

now and then; it dreams of cable-

cars and smoking-cars and Volkses that can spill

unthinkable powers of ten in clownface) unlike this poor

hollowed-out sedation of sedan I pull

off the throughway, up to the pump

20

marked self, and fill.

(1994)