Rachel Andrews - Poetry

05/26/2026

Hard to believe I wrote this Memorial Day Weekend 2025. What a year! I love the simplicity of this poem with its alert imagery. The hair shadow crackling. Perhaps it should be cackling too!
Here I am reading it on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/k5Z4XqmNDLk?si=95JchTT1EGBGdaPF
And Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4cAtY6smazvNvmasydFFAY?si=bde18d67bcd04468

05/13/2026

I've been deep in the trenches of a poem about fallout from 9-11 in relation to the loss of a friend and the sea of anonymous blood spilt and our collective responsibility to it. My writing for this has been deeply influenced by these two incredible poems and their respective performances by Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site . I've been living with these performances for almost 20 years now having bought, and still owning the original Poetry Speaks CD anthology. Such gems. Nothing like hearing the voice of another in your heartbeat. That's what (good, rhymical) poetry is like for me.

3.8K likes, 119 comments. "Langston Hughes reads The Negro Speaks of Rivers"

04/29/2026

I have been slacking off and has almost finished. Did you add a poem to your playlist yet? Closet Light is about how easy something often is when you are finally ready for it and The Cup is about how the emotions around menstruation are shifting as I age and my body prepares for its spiritually fertile time (the age of the crone), releasing its physical fertility (the age of the maiden/lover/mother).
Here are the links to the audio:
Closet Light
https://youtu.be/TX0XlOJGPNI?si=PPkAQxbHhCTaycwm
https://open.spotify.com/track/1eCRAh8wHXXhcjK6uStMIn?si=8678e3f2f4b343ef
The Cup
https://youtu.be/sdssaOmu0Zo?si=iZLOSfccgfKUjSUj
https://open.spotify.com/track/4D9DIj4aXVsbos5SdNgmqi?si=1fdb25b327b04f73

04/20/2026

Ahh, the movie theater! This poem was written last May when I went to see Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. I hadn't been to the movies by myself for a long time and was forcing myself to get out and about. As the last in a long line of Mission Impossible movies, the first few that I saw at the AMC Palisades 21 and IMAX then being in AMC Muncie 12 , it was already emotionally loaded. Thank you AMC for surviving covid.




Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/0X9P3XxNkRvd9VAHSnH2H5?si=c57b4c14351d482e
YoutTube:
https://youtu.be/XCqvgPJvjDs?si=G_hoB8T3Hs7eceBA

In the playlist, I have this after one of my favorite Louis Armstrong songs: Shadrack, Meshach, Abendnego....
https://youtu.be/ihOHhViUrdQ?si=FcpSLMkK8jmUQqtk

04/18/2026

Also here!

04/18/2026

Find me here this weekend along with other members of the The Humpback Barn Poets and Lylanne Musselman

On April 18th, 2026, Celebrate National Poetry Month by joining Published and Emerging Indiana Poets at Hancock County Arts.