Andrew Chi Keong Yim

He climbs the husks of wrecked cars, 

tripwire of light frayed under

his off-brand Sketchers. The guttural workings

of a mini generator runs

to the room, the room his father built

with his own hands. At the salvage yard,

where they now live, his father works all day, 

with his hands submerged in the guts

of a car. The boy imagines the method 

by which this man who made him 

makes a ruined car hum again: less surgical, 

for he knows nothing of this

besides a magic of sorts, a man diving

into a dead machine and pulling

out its former self. He hopes to learn this work,

the art of un-wreckage, to resurrect 

what he can fit in his small arms.

He waits to hold his mother and see

the years of hurt she wears melt, and find, 

instead, the mother he knows lifting 

him to her shoulders. In the late afternoon heat

that floods over West O’ahu, he climbs

into the bed of trucks, over rusted summits

of defunct sedans. The wind kicks 

dirt over his skin.