Poetry: THE OPPOSITE OF A GREAT TRUTH IS ALSO TRUE by José del Valle
We love how José del Valle’s “The Opposite of a Great Truth Is Also True” compresses some of the biggest beliefs of the day into small marbles of imagery, rolled out across the lines. Time is squeezed, the past is the present, and there’s no line between me and thing. “Bob’s your uncle.”
THE OPPOSITE OF A GREAT TRUTH IS ALSO TRUE
Dinosaurs shat here. Asteroids thumped. And girls,
tight in the foreskins of lovers, scrawled fuck you in lipstick
in the yearbooks of plant-eaters. Squirrels
evolved into your husband, Dick.
Love adheres like a barnacle. Like the cancer
I picked up in Pittsburgh. Breasts like night driving, carbuncle
red lips – I stick, like a June bug, with a chirr.
Thus the cellar world, the worm world. Bob’s your uncle.
Wave after agonized, nauseating wave, shot through with particles
from outer space –
hold me! cherish me! I slip like a popsicle
from the stick, lose my place
in the blur of spectacle.
A snowman with a human face.
José del Valle
José del Valle is a Cuban-born writer living in Rockville, RI. His poems and stories have appeared in Carve, The Saranac Review, The Acentos Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Mainichi, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Heron's Nest, the late Jane Reichhold's Lynx, and other small haiku pubs.
