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the poet
Rachel Burrows lives in Wiltshire and teaches literacy in a specialist provision for teenagers. Nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, she had her work chosen by John Agard for Guernsey Literary Festival's Poems on the Move Exhibition 2026. Rachel's writing has appeared on numerous online platforms – from Sixty Odd Poets to The Candyman’s Trumpet – as well as in anthologies from Write Out Loud, The Broken Spine and Yaffle Press. Her writing for children has seen her longlisted and shortlisted for a number of international competitions, including the Cheshire Novel Prize, Undiscovered Voices and The Guppy Open Submission Competition.
the poems
Walking with Hogweed
and her Black Dog
Cow parsley springs from the hedges,
skimming the boundaries with
bubble and excitement.
Slender and elegant,
she waves in the breeze,
her pink companions cheering her on –
edgy, hedgy and alive.
And we admire her.
Spring is here at last!
We worship her for weeks
of days that stretch
with sun-filled hope
and possibility.
We don’t notice her fading.
But she does.
Then others try to mimic her.
They clamour in the hedgerow,
holding their dense white offerings aloft.
We are cow parsley, they shout.
But they aren’t!
Their stems are too stout,
too marked, too grooved.
They stand firm,
with off-white froth, unwaving and solid.
Towering, desperate for beauty,
they vie for attention,
but are no match.
Their occasional flush of remarkable pink
goes ignored.
And they shrivel,
unnoticed,
to hollow shells
at the end of the hogweed summer.
Parasite
Neither rainbow nor seascape
could ever bend me
closer to believing
in some being greater.
Magnets could not draw me
nor gravity pull.
But a fluke
begs me worship every time.
Dicrocoelium dentriticum – parasite.
Lifecycle divine.
Every stage improbable, explicably perfect.
The snail, the ant and the final host
– a ruminant – whose egg-laced droppings
are swallowed
by spiral-shelled grazers,
whose slimeballs of larvae,
(blown out of their airholes)
are lapped up by ants, who (miracle coming)
get eaten by sheep, who eat only plants, not ants,
unless … they have wandered,
far from the soil,
brainwashed and lost
in higher-ground wilderness …
ganglia writhing with larval stages –
tricked by desire to climb higher and higher,
their bodies infested,
they reach for the sun and final host,
tip of the blade,
tenacious, exposed …
… and consumed …
by the flock,
snail ant infinitum.
Natural selection.
Amen.
Smouldering
Most times were fine.
Placement partners, delivered off-grid.
By candlelight, we lived together,
cooked maize together,
ate maize together,
talked together,
about maize together.
Taught together,
talked together, walked together,
cooked, ate, talked
maize together,
lumped together,
dumped together … until,
Hiss!
We flared and spat
like cockroach flames
and another thing …
and another thing …
spattering truths until the
one with the candle
remembered it was theirs,
and they’d go.
Just like that.
Out with the light and a smirk.
Leaving the other alone.
In the dark.
Extinguished.
Ha!
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb