Poetry: “Onder Het Leven” by Paul Potts
Under the surface of everyday life, each of us has perhaps a few impressions from where our clothes dig in, or a few marks from bug bites—secret maps which tell where we’ve been. This under-layer—below the exterior yet still on the skin—is a threshold Potts stands in throughout this poem, beginning with the Dutch title which roughly translates to “under life.” In the opening stanza, the reader is placed at the edge of a foggy night, which holds the possibility for something holy or horrible to happen at any moment. One idea flows into the next in a stream-of-consciousness manner, as though the reader is riding passenger as the speaker zig-zags down the road. In closing, we’re reminded that our histories can’t be scrubbed clean, not even if we’re nitpicky; or, more accurately, “mierenneuken,” which is the more vulgar way to say it.
Read Potts’ poetry below.
Onder Het Leven
smear the roadlines into
something like handwriting or
memory and I kept watching the
water so it might spell something
out or at least blur everything
enough to feel okay again
saturday night kind of light
where the fog looks holy
but not in a church way
headlights on accident glass
and all of it just felt weirdly
honest like when someone
says I love you but you’re
listening for the part they
didn’t say or when someone
lies so well it sounds
like breakfast, routine,
brushing teeth and bleeding
she wore pearls with a cherry dress
that looked like it belonged to
someone braver, skin bruised
in constellations, the kind corsets
leave. tight enough to press
memory out of a person like
pulp from fruit and I don’t know
why but it felt beautiful or bold
or something you do when
words won’t land
and under all that filigree like
tiny nerves sketching out a
secret map and everyone
has one even the loud people
especially the loud people and
they all try so hard to scrub them
clean with safety, with distance
with just enough pride, with
mierenneuken
Paul Potts
Paul Potts (b. 2007; he/him) is a poet from Oklahoma. He began writing poetry in September of 2024, after recommendation from a teacher. You can find his poetry in The Louisville Review, Rowayat, Wingless Dreamer, Lips Magazine, Nova Literary-Arts Magazine, and The Words Faire. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing jazz on both the drums and vibraphone.
