Charlotte Innes – Eugenia

Innes LE P&W 2 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024

Eugenia, poems by Charlotte Innes.


Eugenia

Elegant in bearing and expensive clothes,
small and light, almost pretty, with a smile
that seemed to exhibit the warmth, the inner glow
of a Noguchi lamp, my grandmother

often collapsed into angry accusations
of betrayal that seemed to me as a child,
and as an adult, overly harsh, frightening
in that sudden shift from smiles to screaming:
warmth transformed into fifty acres of fire.
How could one thing become another so fast?

Noguchi said that in his work he tried
to explore dichotomies. Akari lamps
combine an ancient craft with modern art—
the bamboo frame, the washi paper shade
recast as twisting towers, a ballooning sun—
once lit with candles, now with electric bulbs.

He saw the value in a negative space,
positive too, often in combination—
the empty center of a shade, the sudden
shift to vessel, the rich cargo of light.

My grandmother died before I grappled with
this melding in her—her natural joie de vivre
holding hands with losses. As a child in Galicia,
she lost her parents to an early death
(I don’t know why—she never spoke of them).

At fourteen: her grandfather, killed by Cossacks,
her grandmother fleeing, dying in Romania.
In Germany, the Nazis took away
her husband, her home. She escaped to Switzerland
and then to London—which, to my grandmother,
was never home, prompting her return
to the city where, she said, she’d been most happy,
Berlin, to live her last few years alone
in a small hotel—our final meeting place.

Beautifully coiffed, dressed in a tailored suit,
she screams across a table at my father
whose raw, shouted responses she ignores—
moments after the hugs, and the warm smile
that seems as genuine as the gentle light,
the resilience of a Noguchi lamp, whose lightly
glued, almost transparent shade, retains
the rough texture of the mulberry’s inner bark.


Trees

More and more, I swim towards a rock
that moves away from me, and what I say

seems less real to me than the sparrow pecking
and scraping at my kitchen screen today.

But after we talked, you and I—or rather,
I let rip and you replied with a spare

yes or no at just the right moment—
a gentleness settled in that I might compare

with fresh green leaves dipping softly
outside my window in the late afternoon breeze,

except that once you said I mention trees
too often in my poems. It doesn’t matter.

Maybe trees are a kind of touchstone for me,
like that poet whose poems are full of horses,

grazing steadily, even as they die.
If only tenderness could be stored. I could

always turn you into a tree—in a poem,
I mean—a noble cedar, shedding needles

but evergreen, rooted in words to read
in the bitter cold or after the darkest dream.


The Children

Too late for lost loves—we all
carry the stone of unforgiving
anger, all unconquerable,
like Callery pears stealing space
and nutrients from native species.

Good that other seeds unfurl—
inside this child. I ask about
her games and toys. I listen. She hugs me.
I think she wants to know she matters.
I think I’m blessed.

Sometimes goodness
can place a hold on hurt, charge rage,
change laws, can offer hope or aid—
doctors mending limbs, musicians,
souls, poets, our battered spirits.

O human ingenuity.

Along my street, houses nestle
under palms and cedars, uncrushed
by quakes, unharmed by fire or flood,
unbombed—

unlike that place where soldiers
bulldoze schools, children screaming,
parents pulling them through the windows.

My friend, we’ve known each other years.
Seated at my table, we talk
of those who think they’re in control.
My word for them, cartoonish. You say,
Doesn’t that diminish evil?

A shadow flickers briefly. True,
I fear the worst and maybe we must
to save ourselves from sorrow but—

Sometimes they seem ridiculous,
I say. We laugh. It’s hard not to.

And here, with sunlight on the floor,
the table set for lunch, danger
seems a far cry from coffee,
coffee cake, good friendship, talk.

By six, the October sun has gone.
I clear the plates.

Beneath my window,
a sound repeats, click… click-click…
click… I pause. On the sidewalk,
a small boy is pointing a large,
clear-plastic water-gun, red light
flashing atop its bulbous body,
chasing a girl in a white dress
dotted with tiny red flowers.

As the street darkens, the children
race around each other, shrieking
with laughter. The boy points the gun:

click… click-click-click… click…

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