Unhoused – Yearning for Home

🔥Hot off the press🔥 Now released on Amazon.com

I am incredibly grateful for Candice L. Daquin’s mentorship in my first anthology editing experience, and for Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld giving us the opportunity to put this anthology together.

UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home is a powerful and deeply human anthology exploring the realities of homelessness, displacement, migration, statelessness, and the universal search for belonging. Through evocative poetry, poignant flash writing, true stories, and compelling artwork, this collection gives voice to those who have experienced the loss of home—whether through war, poverty, immigration struggles, discrimination, economic hardship, or social instability—and to those who bear compassionate witness to these experiences.

Far beyond politics and headlines, UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home focuses on the emotional truths behind displacement: the grief of losing safety, the ache of isolation, the resilience required to survive, and the enduring hope of finding connection, identity, and peace. The anthology shines a light on the invisible struggles faced by unhoused and marginalized individuals around the world while honoring their courage, humanity, and determination to endure.

Editors Jia-Li Yang and Candice Louisa Daquin are both immigrants with extensive experience working in homelessness and crisis support services. It was their inspiration that drew the interest of Prolific Pulse Press LLC. This collection continues the press’s tradition of publishing meaningful social justice anthologies that amplify underrepresented voices. All four editors offer a glimpse of their experiences in the foreword.

Raw, compassionate, heartbreaking, and hopeful, UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home invites readers to look beyond stereotypes and statistics to witness the deeply personal realities of what it means to search for safety, stability, and a place to call home.

A portion of the UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home proceeds will benefit The Women’s Center of Wake County, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Sanity Has Its Perks

A lot of waiting
sitting on the threshold
of the old farm house
watching a sprig of lavender grow
and the relentless desire of a bee

Rain has new meanings
besides sadness and funerals
It fills my empty coffee cup
to more than enough

At starless nights
I will my mind’s pen
to a steams of consciousness
far into my dream state
remember, reframe
rewrite the past
into a new moon song

Accidental Success

We read “The Red Wheelbarrow” 
We discussed
We came to the view that
William Carlos Williams started it
then ran out of inspiration
He decided to set it aside
and go back to it later
But he never did

Solution

I walk the deep forest,
the long stretched ocean beach line,
the vast desert.
Because
I want to be small,
so small, almost invisible,
then
my troubles,
the turmoil of life,
the heart deep pain
will be vanishing
to nothing.

April Rain

In the southern hemisphere
the April rain turned the leaves amber overnight
This sudden sadness even taints my perception of the sun
that once was golden with warm embrace
The soiled ground reminds me of
the period of my life
when everything was a uphill battle
so stuck
climbing was a daily routine
I still feel the hopelessness
knowing I am living in the distance of a decade
An old friend I desperately want to forget
and move past it all
Standing in the biting April rain
I am present in the reality of a bondage

What I’ve Been Doing

I have been posting less frequently lately.

The major contributing factor is that I am not feeling as creative as I used to. This may change, but it is my current state. Hence, it takes time for me to read your posts.

Another factor is that I have taken up card making as a creative outlet since February 2025. I follow online tutorial to make cards. Here are some of the cards I made recently.

Under the Surface

“Breathing is not free
in the mess of life and living.” ,
the tangled roots cry.
Nobody can tell from the tree top vantage point.
Birds are happily nesting and feeding the young.

Birdsong and cicada buzz are fanning the summer frenzy.

Lemon, lime, watermelon and cherry ice drinks,
metal fishing rods, surfboards and snorkelling gears,
salt hair, bikini and shorts, beach volleyball,
gulls spying on the fish and chips,
beer bottles weighing down stripy cabanas,
no one, not one living thing
hears the tangled roots’ cry.

Learning

We say
we will get married
if we get to 40
and still single

For now
we just
fuck passionately
in between our
each semi-committed relationship

Deep down
I realise that
we don’t want to
lose each other
by giving our hearts
to someone else

There is wisdom
in knowing that
we can’t lose
what we don’t have
like our parents’ marriages

Perspective

I can’t make myself
write about fear
or worry
by your hospital bed

Every breath we take
is a gift
a gift that is second by second

You are breathing
and fighting to stay alive
And isn’t that something
to celebrate
even just for this second