Esther Belin is a Diné (Navajo) poet and multimedia artist who was raised in Los Angeles after her parents were relocated from the Southwest in the 1950s as part of the federal Indian relocation policy. Her work often reflects the experience of Native Americans living in urban centers.

Night Travel I like to travel to L.A. by myself

My trips to the crowded smoggy polluted by brown

indigenous and immigrant haze are healing.

I travel from one pollution to another.

Being urban I return to where I came from

My mother

survives in L.A.

Now for over forty years. I drive to L.A. in the darkness of the day

on the road before CHP

one with the dark

driving my black truck

invisible on my journey home. The dark roads take me back to my childhood

riding in the camper of daddy’s truck headed home.

My brother, sister and I would be put to sleep in the

camper

and sometime in the darkness of the day

daddy would clime into the cab with mom carrying a

thermos full of coffee and some Pendleton blankets

And they would pray

before daddy started the truck

for journey mercies. Read on » From From the Belly of My Beauty by Esther Belin ©1999 The Arizona Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. | Website | Published works |