Weekly Poem: 'Prayer for the Hanoi Man Who Waits for Breakdowns on His Block'

**By Jennifer Richter**
One like him on every block, a man
who crouches by his tray of parts: gears,
plugs, bolts, sprockets, cogs, his greasy
jewels displayed on slick black oil.
But this is for the man on Hang Bai Street,
the block before the lake--the man who looked
away when I walked past, who dropped his eyes
to hide the war of scars his body is.
Oh God, so much to fix. Give him, once
a day at least, a woman at his feet; give him
what it takes to fix her limping bike.
Forgive us all. Make his next world one
that doesn't always fall apart around him.

[Jennifer Richter](http://jenniferrichterpoet.com/) is author of the collection, "Threshold," winner of the 2009 [Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition](http://craborchardreview.siuc.edu/). She was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship in Poetry by Stanford University, where she taught in the Creative Writing Program for four years. She earned her MFA at Penn State University.