R a c h e l    B e t e s h

I am a nurse, gardener, and mother who writes poems — at a wooden desk, in a 118-year-old house, with the window open. Poetry is a practice, a surprise, a motion to lift up any given thing; it is always on my to-do list.

contact: rachel.betesh@gmail.com

2025 Grant Recipient in Poetry, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women Writers, to support the completion of a debut collection: The Beginning Is Never A Homeland

Longlisted for 2022 Emerging Poet Prize, Palette Poetry

selected poems

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AT THE VIGIL, Pleiades Magazine, Special Folio on the theme of Elegy, curated by Ayeesha Rees (Spring 2025)

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MY MARRIAGE AS A DAY IN LATE JULY, 32 Poems (Winter 2025)

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FROM THESE COME ALL THE OTHERS, Bennington Review (Fall 2024)

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FOXES – Wildness (Issue 33, April 2024)

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HOW TO PACK UP AN ABORTION CLINIC – and – POEM BEGINNING AND ENDING ON LINES BY LARRY LEVIS, AFTER READING JOHN MURILLO, Denver Quarterly (Spring 2024)

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ISRAELI MILITARY BASE, 1999 – read in Philadelphia as part of a Teach-In for Ceasefire in Gaza (March 2024) and printed in Consequence Forum: A Journal of Global Conflict (May 2025)

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THE FINE AIR – and – JUST FROM STANDING, Poetry Northwest (September 2023)

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SWEEPING, featured on Philadelphia Contemporary’s Healing Verse Poetry Line, curated by Trapeta Mayson and Yolanda Wisher (March 2023)

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TWELVE POEMS FOR THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR, featured in Phully Rooted, a seasonal wall calendar celebrating farmers and artists of the Philadelphia region

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FEEDING THE HORSES, BRINK literary journal (Fall 2022)

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BUILT TO WAIT , The New Yorker (November 29, 2021)

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WHERE SOMETHING HAPPENS, Philadelphia Stories (Summer 2022)

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THE TASK (For Daunte Wright)

Accidents, the unexpected:

a too-cold night 

wilting what would bloom

but for this, the forecast. 

Swell of the wooden door

on damp days,

and the task of pushing it

in to fit, into the frame. 

That the officer meant, she says,

to take her taser, 

instead of her gun.

Heat, that the light makes

by repetition on the man, 

climbing, in the tinder. 

I should know him. 

Frost, of having turned to ice

what moved then, 

meaning before.

Just left with it,

what’s been endlessly done. 

Looking for a word

in the pile of flowers.

That one, accident:

too thick from use. 

Mistake: the edges curl, weakly.

Call this a fire: sound 

all the bells for it,

a burning wrong.

Not an accident–

this weather, the fast pull.

Tender things everywhere, 

opening, on slippery leaves

soaked through with it, 

the rain.