California Archives | ROOM A Sketchbook for Analytic Action

PROTESTATION by Daisy Bassen

PoemsBy admin October, 2020

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s creative writing program and completed her medical training at the University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, The Sow’s Ear, and [PANK] as well as multiple other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology and for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

PERHAPS by Aremu Adams Adebesi

PoemsBy admin October, 2020

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His work of poetry, “Force Mechanism,” was adapted into Lucent Dreaming’s first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack.

OTHERING by Aremu Adams Adebesi

PoemsBy admin October, 2020

THE POWER IS IN YOUR PULSE by Paula Coomer

PoemsBy admin October, 2020

Paula Coomer spent most of her childhood in the industrial Ohio River town of New Albany, Indiana. The daughter of more than two hundred years of Kentucky Appalachian farmers, she moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1978. She has been a migrant farm laborer, a waitress, a bean sorter in a cannery, a cosmetics saleswoman, a federal officer, a nurse, and a university writing instructor. Her essays, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, Ascent, and The Raven Chronicles, among others.

WAR AND PANDEMIC IN ALEPPO by Mohamad Kebbewar

EssaysBy admin October, 2020

Danger during the war in Aleppo was marked with sound and smoke. During the pandemic, danger is boundless. It can be everywhere and anywhere. The most fashionable and well-off person can carry the virus and pass it on to me, while on the other hand, an armed person walking next to me on the sidewalk could be harmless. The invisible danger is what makes the virus lethal. In war, if the sound is far away, then I can assume I am safe.

FIRE AND ICE IN PORTLAND by Joshua Maserow, Maryam Omidi, and Omer Leshem

EssaysBy admin October, 2020

Portland protesters armed with leaf blowers and cardboard signs face off with masked federal agents sporting fatigues and riot gear—guns, truncheons, and shields. Orange tear-gas clouds plume up from the tarmac as the agents grab protesters and hurl them into unmarked cars. These are images typically associated with far-off, war-torn countries ruled by authoritarian regimes—not democratic governments. But in less than six months, some of the most toxic elements of the US national psyche have risen to the surface, denuded by the global pandemic and bull-horned across the country by the divisive and belligerent rhetoric of the White House.

THE WITNESSES by Margarita Serafimova

PoemsBy admin October, 2020

Margarita Serafimova is the winner of the 2020 Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award and a 2020 Pushcart nominee. She has four collections in Bulgarian and a chapbook, A Surgery of A Star (Staring Problem Press). Her chapbook, En Tîm (Wilderness) (San Francisco University Poetry Center), and a full-length collection, A White Boat and Foam (Interstellar Flight Press), are forthcoming. Her work appears widely, including in the Nashville Review, LIT, Agenda Poetry, Poetry South, Botticelli, London Grip, Steam Ticket Literary Journal, Waxwing, A-Minor, Trafika Europe, Noble/ Gas Qtrly, Obra/Artifact, great weather for Media, Origins, and Nixes Mate Review.

SHELTER by Nan Cohen

PoemsBy admin July, 2020

Nan Cohen is the author of two books of poetry, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City. The recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and an NEA Literature Fellowship, she lives in Los Angeles and codirects the poetry programs of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

LETTERS FROM LOCKDOWN by Tiffany Chu

EssaysBy admin July, 2020

Last week, I dug up a box of my parents’ old letters. They were written before my parents were married, while my mom was still in Taiwan and an ocean away from my dad in the United States. A surprising number of the letters were in English; the writing is stilted, and it’s clear that English is neither of my parents’ first language, but the mundane recounting of their days felt somehow both endearing and sacred. Holding the tangible artifacts of my parents’ courtship in my hands, I imagined for the first time the twentysomethings they were when they wrote those letters.

LOVE IN PANDEMIC TIMES by Galit Hasan-Rokem

PoemsBy admin July, 2020

Galit Hasan-Rokem is professor emerita of Hebrew literature and folklore research at the Hebrew University. In addition to many scholarly books and articles, she has published three poetry volumes in Hebrew and several poetry translations of major Swedish poets into Hebrew. She is also co-editor of The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present and cultural editor at the Palestine-Israel Journal.