Found poems

Here are the poems we created in class last week from Alexie's story "Witnesses, secret and Not" about being thirteen and Indian:

I learned how to use a hypodermic needle before I learned how to ride a bike.
Punctuated by more accidents
A tough life,
Thirteen.
One Indian doesn't tell another what to do.
It's all about reaction as opposed to action.
We just watch things happen then make comments.
We ordered diet since my father and I are both diabetic.
Must be kind of like disappearing.

***

Most of all, I had to find out what it meant to be an Indian
and there ain't no self-help manual for that.
360 degrees
At age 13 nobody thinks they're going to die.
I had to figure out what it meant to be a boy, a man too.
Just got swallowed up
Figuring out each year as it came,
then discarding it when the new one came along.
His eyes had stories written across them.