Author: Cassa Bassa

🇦🇺🇨🇳 inquisitive, observant, witty, a thinker, was a misfit child 😊

Teaser – “Unhoused Yearning for Home” Anthology

The call for submissions is coming up soon…

I am working with Candice Louisa Dequin to co-edit this anthology, and it will be published by Prolific Pulse Press.

UNHOUSED – Yearning for Home shines a light on: Migration, asylum-seeking, illegal-and-legal-immigration, and other factors resulting in being without a home, national-identity, country, or security net. Whether you have immigrated and found yourself isolated and unable to fit into your adopted country’s identity, or lost status in a country you identify with, been out-of-status, living-below-the-radar, a Dreamer or undocumented, or forced to flee your homeland because of discrimination, war or other destabilizing forces, this is your opportunity to share your experiences on the hardships and often invisible struggles so many endure.

Prolific Pulse Press’s background in publishing social justice anthologies, continues with ‘Unhoused – Yearning for Home’ – an anthology of poetry and flash-writing on the current epidemic of unhoused, homeless, stateless, and country-less people and how this lack of safety affects generations. We seek to highlight the writer’s resilience and determination to survive and thrive whilst sharing their truth and experience(s).

‘Unhoused – Yearning for Home’ will be edited by Carrie Yang and Candice Louisa Daquin. Carrie Yang works in the Homelessness and Employment services in Australia and is herself an immigrant. Candice Daquin is also an immigrant, currently in America, and has worked in crisis centers in the US/Europe and Canada. Their combined professional experience, alongside having produced over twenty anthologies, is the pulse behind this project. The editors are fortunate enough to work with Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld, Manager of Prolific Pulse Press LLC. Given Prolific Pulse Press’s history of publishing exceptional anthologies, including Cadence (finalist in the American Writing Awards), Social Justice Inks, Dear Heart, and Heartbeats, our goal is to be a powerful platform for erased voices on this neglected and often inaccurately understood subject.

‘Unhoused – Yearning for Home,’ doesn’t seek to become mired in politics, but rather through the lens of human experience, help others comprehend the unique social and physical challenges surrounding this kind of limbo. Poetry and creative writing is an ideal vessel for this and we welcome all forms of poetry, flash-fiction and accompanying artwork. ‘Unhoused – Yearning for Home’ is scheduled to be published in early 2026.

Therapy is Hard Work

Go to therapy
is not like taking a pill
then the headache is gone.

Therapy is like giving the tools to a gardener
they still need to dig through the dirt
to let new shoots come through.

Message to A Stranger

Hi

We may not know each other personally,
but we exist in the same vast universe—
our paths crossing, even if just briefly.
I know you’ve laughed and cried,
felt joy and sorrow,
held happiness and heartache side by side.

You’ve been both teacher and student,
giver and receiver of care.
You’ve offered your heart, and at times, kept it guarded.
You’ve shared pieces of yourself and held some back.

You are a living, breathing human—
doing your best, navigating life as it comes.

Love and respect,
from a fellow human being

Writer

If I keep writing about someone else’s story
The ache in my heart will have hope to transform into something beautiful

3am Ponder

When your arm stretches out
I don’t have to take it
just let you hang
Soon, you’ll grow droopy
like my eyelids
fighting a losing battle

All the decent men and women are taken
I am left alone to ponder
at 3am
and trying to arm wrestle 
till 5am
then I’ll feel like a pathetic winner
that defeated sleep

Soak

Calm waves
rolling in and out
in rhythmic heartbeats
A lone dragonfly
hovers over
in tango steps

I am
floating on
the healing ocean
stretch my back
looking at
the silkworm woven sky

My skin
turns into a prune
resign from the soak
Up I go
to chase the noon sun
on wet sand

Summer Dry Land

Dead seedweeds under my feet
cut deep into my skin

They blanket the sand like the carcasses
in the scorching Sahara

Pain is not the sensation
nor hot

The ambiguity put me in a head spin

Tumbling thoughts fall on the summer dry land

The Winter Sunflower Field

Writer’s note – sometimes I write outliner things under the creative license.

The winter crisp air and the drew dampen ground create a sharp contrast which allures him to take a walk in the countryside fields where sunflowers used to invigorate him with life.

He drops the paint brush, pick up his coat and rush to the door with certain excitement. He is hit by the cold air once he gets to the court yard. He picks up his speed and starts jogging. His nostrils flare to breathe in more air. He takes of his winter thick socks and shoves them in his coat pockets. Now he feels the moisten grass with his bare feet. He picks up speed again running towards the fields. 

When he reaches the filed, he throws himself on a bed of harvested sunflower stalks with arms and legs fully stretching out. Now he has the full view of the star filled indigo sky hugging the voluptuous full moon. He laughs and howls in the open field, feeling the freedom and elation. 

He unzips his coat to regulate the elevated body temperature and unbuttons his jeans to give more room to his erection. Visually, he is showered by the stardust under the Milky Way. They make his skin tingling and form goosebumps allover. He holds his now throbbing penis and stroking it to the rhythm of his heartbeat. It’s a sensation that he has never experienced before. The polar opposite of the deep of the night chilliness and the warmness in his hand collides into an euphoric serenity. The stickiness in his hand and the wet grass tickling his feet settle in the dead silence around him. 

He slowly looks around, the grass which was a uniformed blur now is 3D and showing hues like Van Gogh’s ‘Patch of Grass’. His body temperature starts to drop. Frosty air masks his face, then his abdomen which causes him to shiver. The feeling of the urge to urinate hurries him up and starts to jog home where the unfinished painting is waiting for his final touch, or a start-over.

无奈

远远的
你站着
长长身影

默默地
我望着
喃喃自语

心灵的对话
越不过的闸
跨不过的域

Purple

My heart was bruised
fell from your pedestal

The red sky bleeds into the indigo sea

A hermit crab
hiding in its shell
dreading for the mermaid song