Belly Down And Growling. Lights Off. Poem by Vonnie Postit

i am good at expanding things,
i always have been.
i love to see the flexible faces of truth
and ignore those who see it as a
dichotomy.
i'm excellent at the mundane,
at loneliness and self pity;
i become beautiful with hardship
and warring days.
i say this lightly because despite
dreaming,
nothing in life has made it outside
of the television
and i have been forced into the dramatic.
scenes play in my head
with actors that never asked to
be a part of it;
a script that is written in between
cigarettes,
in the lull of a conversation
and when i think he has moved on.

bored (adj.) : : feeling weary because
one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's
current activity.

i am a fantastic actor. ask my
exes or my parents, they'll
sketch you wonderful, perfect pictures
of a woman who is uncontainable and
free
i hate the word freedom its used like a gun
but i will use it all the same as i have
been taught, for
i have created an inaccessible infinity
within a finite life.
you may call that irrational
i call it clever and feminine.
i was raised to be charming, not
sincere.

i get annoyed at all of the
single- lettered words in my poems.
just like i get annoyed with sunlight
and my inability to show my brown
heritage on my skin
like my brother does.
my mother glows as she tells him
his life matters.
her presidential vote does not reflect
this
and when i tell her so, she brings me closer,
turns on Indian humming sounds that
were designed to calm oppressions.
she is the immigrant;
the lucky kind of brown that was granted
a white card.
i sometimes feel that
her luck is an embarrassment.
most of the time my father's lineage of
pearls,
wide open spaces and safety
feels like a noose tattooed on my
throat.

i have always loved drama,
which is why i write long poems.
i have always loved dreaming
which is why i sleep all day.
everything is so beautiful in the
beginning; the more it goes on it just
deteriorates into something like
soggy bread.
disappointing… lacking.
beauty: a habit i come to understand
from my mother at the age of 4.
tragedy: the practice of accepting
inconvenience and strangeness.
laughter: the holy; that which mocks the absurd.
fallacy: the villain and the victim,
the blamed, the bruised and the embellished.

the beauty,
the tragedy,
the laughter (the absurd) ,
the fallacy…

Dear Girl with Brown Eyes and Shaved Head
what do your tatttoos mean?
have you experienced death?
is it because you do not love yourself?
is it because you do not believe in god?
have you ever wished yourself dead?
are you on your period?
do you hate white people?
do you hate black people?
do you recycle?
have you ever been in love?
do you know yourself?
do you know yourself?
do you really know yourself?