Essential Voices

Amy M. Alvarez is an Affrilachian poet and professor living in Morgantown, West Virginia. Pamela Gemme is a poet, artist, and creative writing tutor from Massachusetts. Shana Hill is a poet and founder of Poetica Pastor. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Alexis Ivy is a poet and outreach advocate for homeless people in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

List of Illustrations
Foreword |Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Fear: It lives in droplets
Monster under Me
Fiction |Nathan Blalock
Table of Contents for a Manual of Pandemic Response Protocols
Poetry |Rasha Abdulhadi
The Worst of Times
Essay |Frances Ogamba
Essentials
Poetry |Maria James-Thiaw
Recipe for Troubled Times
Poetry |Linda Parsons
Night Guard
Poetry |Linda Parsons
Pandemic Pandemonium
Poetry |Kenneth Moore
Even the Robins Know
Poetry |Robert Okaji
Distance: As we moan into the phone
How Corona Evolves or Makes Us Evolve, or We Have to Evolve Together
Poetry |Xiaoly Li
Sequestered Alone
Poetry |Joan Hofmann
To whom it may concern,
Letter and Poetry |Alyce Copeland
Love in the Time of Corona
Poetry |John Cuetara
What We Know about the Fatalities
Fiction |Lisa Michelle Moore
Do Lockdowns Ever End?
Poetry |Diego Islas
Wish You Were Here
Poetry |Joan Goodreau
Comfort
Poetry |Celeste Blair
Didn’t We Once Call It Love?
Poetry |E. Ethelbert Miller
The Cheat
Poetry |Rayna Momen
How I’ve Survived This Long, Part 3
Poetry |Kasha Martin Gauthier
What it’s like to get married in prison during a pandemic
Essay |Christopher Blackwell
Mask: A parachute that catches my breath
Invisi dis ability in COVID Times
Essay |Catherine Young
Corona Spring
Poetry |Deborah DeNicola
Unmasked
Poetry |Faiza Anum
The Fabric of Society
Fiction |Alice Benson
Masked
Poetry |Christine Rhein
Melt Down
Poetry |Mary K O’Melveny
May 6, 2020
Poetry |Kevin McLellan
Barriers
Essay |Robbie Gamble
fromThe Quarantinas
Poetry |Stephanie Lenox
Labor: Warnings on the floor
Bezos Knows
Poetry |Ranney Campbell
We Are Family: A Lesson Learned as an On-line English Teacher during COVID-19
Essay |Maya Lear Brewer
Line Speed
Poetry |Ben Gunsberg
Staying Socially and Politically Active while Socially Distancing: Making the Issues around COVID-19 Part of One’s Activism
Essay |C. Liegh McInnis
Essential Medical Workers Are to Report to Duty
Poetry |Michele Bombardier
These Hands
Fiction |Z. S. Roe
Postcard from Pandemic
Poetry |Robert Okaji
A Classroom Hums in Wait.
Poetry |Vanessa Chica Ferreira
Sickness: My stomach charlie-horsed
My COVID Story
Essay |Brett L. Massey
Essentially Unseen
Poetry |Lavinia Kumar
Nudge
Poetry |Phrieda Bogere
Elegy
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
I Cut Up My Hillary T-shirt to Make aCOVID Mask
Poetry |Joan E. Bauer
A Story of Constantine, COVID-19, and Pandora
Fiction |Waliyah Oladipo
New Age
Poetry |Robert J. Levy
Alcohol Woman
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
Grief: Interjected like a comma
Elegy, Interrupted
Poetry |Emily Ransdell
My Mother Whispers, Doesn’t He Look So Peaceful
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
A Sonnet for the Living
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
#covidclarity
Essay |Marcelle Mentor
Trapped
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
Love, Coronavirus
Poetry |Lisa Suhair Majaj
A Poet Attempts to Homeschool, Week 6: Fractions
Poetry |Kasha Martin Gauthier
Evaporating Villanelle during a Time of Pandemic
Poetry |Jen Karetnick
A Day in the Life
Essay |Eric Ebers
What You Want to Say
Poetry |Maria Rouphail
Zoom Funeral
Poetry |Laura Glenn
For Jon, Who Died Because of Time
Poetry |Rayna Momen
Survival: Remember every surface you touch
Essential Nonessentials in Lockdown
Poetry |Katy Giebenhain
The Eaters
Fiction |Danielle Lauren
Off-Script
Poetry |Monserrat Escobar Arteaga
Heroes
Fiction |Mark Brazaitis
15 Mar 2020—A (a roll in the hand is worth two on the shelf) Haiku
Poetry |Peter Joel
We Will Sing of Gone Bodies Some Days from Now
Poetry |Blessing Omeiza Ojo
In Times of Quarantine
Poetry |Rosalie Hendon
Halmoni’s Kimchi Pancakes
Recipe |Elia Min
COVID Curriculum
Essay |Dominique Traverse Locke
Monkeys
Poetry |Fabiyas M V
Justice and Reckoning: Colonial co-morbidities
How to Make White Supremacy Generative/How to Survive a Pandemic
Essay |Ahimsa Timoteo BodhrÁn
Blackout
Poetry |Thomas Beckwith
The Marrow-Sucking Grip of Immigration Injustice
Poetry |Kim Denning
White
Poetry |Roan Davis
we’ve been here before
Poetry |Liseli A. Fitzpatrick
Crosstown
Poetry |Ahimsa Timoteo BodhrÁn
My Uncertain Story
Essay |Noe Hernandez
Em Ontvlecetv / Invaded
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
POV
Poetry |Jameka Hartley
The Home of the Brave
Poetry |David Antonio Reyes
Things I Never Told You
Poetry |Steve Ramirez
Environment and Place: Let the river turn the stone
Lines before Lockdown
Poetry |Lisa Suhair Majaj
hymn
Poetry |Caroline Furr
May Shivers
Poetry |Lukpata Lomba Joseph
For the emptiers have emptied them out
Poetry |Alan Smith Soto
While the World Fell Apart around Us
Poetry |Aimee Nicole
COVID Spring Comes to Southeast Pennsylvania
Poetry |Kenneth Pobo
2020
Poetry |Yuan Changming
Folded Up
Poetry |donnarkevic
Social Distance
Poetry |Fred Shaw
Austin
Poetry |Jeffrey Taylor
Hope: Beyond sorrow there’s a gardenia tree
During quarantine, I embrace myself as a long-hauler,
Poetry |Jen Karetnick
Magdalena
Poetry |Deborah “Deby” Rodriguez
Too Loud to Sleep
Essay |Natalie Mislang Mann
When the Games Return
Poetry |E. Ethelbert Miller
Wasted
Essay |Celeste Blair
This Is Not the End of the World
Poetry |Darius Atefat-Peckham
Touch Screen
Fiction |Mohini Malhotra
Notes
Contributors
About the Editors