Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Four
November- December 2025
We Try, poems by Charlotte.
We Try
Here’s a bleak road, a hill, mid-city,
where petals like long tongues, veined, blue,
transparent as chiffon scarves,
scatter in the wind, blowing fog in,
chilling us to old silences, until
we rake up words, sodden as damp leaves,
worn thin as old party clothes,
words we can’t ignite.
Like a Violin
It was probably spring, probably by the lake
where you first heard a red-winged blackbird sing,
two clear notes and a trill, like a violin
hinting of tough times, you said, and release.
You said it was like getting caught by cold rain—
drenched in your shorts and the red T-shirt you’d worn
for decades until you ripped it up for rags—
the way cold and rain can heighten pleasure,
you said, like a soak in a long, hot bath,
followed by dinner, spicy chili with rice,
like reading the news by a fire, drink in hand,
thinking, I have a roof over my head.
I forget so much these days. Images stay,
the violin, the rain, the T-shirt, the bath,
but I can’t recall what you tried to tell me.
You were by the lake. A bird sang. The weather changed.
Rain
Excerpt from the future.
Set in an army camp guarding an aquifer
and a patch of green in a wasted world.
The day it rains (a miracle!), everyone rushes outside, dancing and hugging,
celebrating in soaked clothes this respite from twenty years of drought.
After weeks of holding back, Alex kisses Emily on the cheek. Emily yells,
It’s my birthday, y’all. I’m seventeen! Alex begins to sing and everyone cheers,
soldiers and scientists moshing around, Esme still in her apron, ditching her cooking,
to sounds that some have never heard. Rain, pounding the corrugated roof—
exhuberant drums. Water, sliding over their bodies, whooshing down the hill,
an ode to harmony between all living creatures and the rock they live on.
As in a fairytale, the rain stops close to midnight and everyone shivers.
Call to attention, Alex says to his second-in-command. Attention, PT yells.
Alex steps forward. Everyone take a shower to wash potential toxins off—
sounding like the doctor he really is. Those on watch take your shower,
complete your shift. Let’s all meet in the fort at eight, to discuss our next steps.
The soldiers race to their hobbit homes, as Emily calls them, carved into the hill.
Jo and Melissa stop collecting samples of soil. Two hours, and they’ll be back.
Esme, Alex says, we’ll breakfast somehow! PT, see you at 7, my place.
Emily… he stops. Yes, she says, I know. Go for a run at 5?
Of course, he says. Just knock on my door. She senses he wants to reach for her, and she,
tense with wanting too, turns away. Even a hug is dangerous till…
Showered and warm in bed, she corrals her crazy whirl of thoughts. Wait. Just wait.
She’ll go back to the city soon, for college. Alex, his army contract up
in the fall, plans to return to his job at the city hospital. One more year
till anything more than a friendly hug would not be thought a crime. But what of the kiss?
She smiles. A birthday treat. He’d murmured, Thank you, Lord. Something they’d done felt right.
© Charlotte Innes
Charlotte Innes is the author of a book of poems, Descanso Drive (Kelsay Books, 2017) and three poetry chapbooks, most recently Twenty Pandemicals (Kelsay Books, 2021). Her poems have appeared in many publications in the U.S. and the U.K. including Agenda (online), The High Window, The Hudson Review, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Xavier Review. Her poetry has also appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Spiritual Writing for 2006 (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). She is currently working on a novel-in-verse (from which one poem here, “Rain,” is excerpted). A former newspaper reporter, freelance writer and teacher, she has written on books and the arts for many publications, including The Nation and the Los Angeles Times. Originally from England, Charlotte Innes now lives in Los Angeles.