Read By: Yesenia Montilla

<p><em>Yesenia Montilla on her selections:</em></p> <p>It seems truly unbelievable that we are coming on a year of this pandemic and I have been like so many: just trying my hardest to survive. How I have survived is by slipping into poetry; my own and others. What deeply moves me about the four poems I chose are their honesty and their surprise, their tenacity and how they unravel a kind of ethos for us all within every line. The words have carried me through even though to me all four seem to work as elegies in a lot of ways; the elegy often times can be the beginning not the end. In this time, right now, I am craving beginning and cursing all the ends that we have suffered and maybe that is why the elegy calls to me. The four poems I am reading for you today are "temporary statement" by Sheila Maldonado; "Vita Nuova" by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado; "This Moment/Right Now" by Roberto Carlos Garcia and "Our Last Summer Together" by Cheryl Boyce Taylor. I hope they strike and move, create fire, or bring peace.</p> <p><a href= "https://bookshop.org/books/that-s-what-you-get/9781936767595"><em>That’s What You Get</em></a> by Sheila Maldonado</p> <p><a href= "https://bookshop.org/books/the-life-assignment/9781945588549"><em>The Life Assignment</em></a> by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado</p> <p><a href= "https://bookshop.org/books/elegies-9781953447920/9781953447920"><em> [elegies]</em></a> by Roberto Carlos Garcia</p> <p><a href= "https://bookshop.org/books/mama-phife-represents-a-memoir-9781642594041/9781642592665"> <em>Mama Phife Represents</em></a> by Cheryl Boyce Taylor</p> <p><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0</span></p>