May 19

Lesson Plans / The Rain Never Stopped

By Jessie Knoles

 

lesson plans

in fifth grade we dissected a chicken leg our
science teacher bought at a nearby grocery store
no one died that year but the next year my
grandmother died and so did my uncle who
put a shotgun to his head
in some other grade we dissected a worm
i don’t know where the worms came from
we put pins on the skin as if to make it a bat
or to rip open its trench coat to see what lay
underneath it was maybe this year that
a boy in my school died on the side of the road
country roads are full of crosses they left
a seat open for him at graduation the entire
small town cried and no one felt good that day
i refused to enroll in biology II because
i couldn’t handle the cat

the rain never stopped

it happened like this / no one not even the weatherman knows how much it will rain / we found her poem in the back of a classroom / we found her name in the obituaries / we made sure there weren’t two / i made sure to schedule the appointment / you made sure to tell no one / she fell into a hole / she didn’t fall the water pushed her / the rain never stopped that day / i never stopped even though i knew it could happen / i don’t regret anything / does the rain regret not stopping / does the hole regret existing / do her poems regret being found

 

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Jessie Knoles is a poet living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has been on the sites of Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Hobart, and Green Mountains Review, and is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue. She works at a garden store.

Art: “Venus”, by featured artist Erika Glass

Erika Glass is a 21 year old senior at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She will graduate in May with a degree in English and hopes to begin a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Fall 2016. Erika is a Lancaster native, and typically works with watercolor and pencil in her visual art.