Trevino Brings Plenty: Music
I never asked my mother what it is to be an Indian
(~poetry~)
Recorded live 03.17.05 on KBOO 90.7FM, Portland, Oregon.
We lived in San Jose, CA
On welfare, commodities, WIC
Found broken toys and ill-fitted clothes
At a Goodwill drop-off
Going to mostly white schools
I hated my coarse black hair
My large cheekbones, brown skin
And very Indian sounding name
We lived off of the city
Ate $1.50 tacos with diet soda
And on weekends with family
Party until crying fits early morning
My mother's mother drank herself to death
My mother's father chose homelessness
Pushing a shopping cart
My uncles would sit in a back room
Cooking up heroin or hubba rocks
Indians in a city that's what we were
Pow wows in college gyms
Moving every year into different motels
Or cheap rooming houses by railroad tracks
Kept warm by open oven heat
T.V., public transit, white families
Every year giving us used board games, clothes, food
While me and my siblings hid in a closet
Watching them wanting to help an Indian family struggle
To be Indian is not to be a savior for white people
To be Indian in a city is not tragic
And now you ask me where I am from
I understand your question, but will answer, next question
Alive in America is all we are
Let's leave it at that