This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Jacob Jardel, is from Language of a Wound is Love by Megha Sood (FlowerSong Press 2025).
Rise
Rise,
rise above the opinionated heads
on stooping shoulders of demised desires
on your sturdy legs or stilts
but rise and become the voice of the unspoken
war cry of the mute
hoarse whispers of the fallen
in the crevice of night.
Rise,
when their tongue is sliced and gutted out
and vultures are feeding on their dead entrails.
Don’t be a mute spectator
they will speak through you
like an apparition,
like a ghost in the machine,
and will beg you to stay.
Be a Massiah
ready to be burned at the stake.
Rise,
enrage their souls
buried deep in their shame
your tongue born out of fire
raising hair at the back of their neck
speaking in an unborn tongue;
like a catalyst for a revolution,
you give them a mission
a purpose,
a reason for their crestfallen souls,
a tourniquet for their bleeding wounds,
a moment to survive,
a shiny glimpse of the future.
Rise,
bedazzle them
rise like Phoenix
out of thin air
devour the stench of pointy accusations.
Rise up to see a new dawn
like the hope,
neatly tucked in the crevices
of the unbroken seed.
Megha Sood (she/her) is an award-winning Asian-American author, poet, editor, and literary activist from New Jersey. She is Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine” at Stanford University. Her works have been supported by the National League of American Pen Women, VONA, Kundiman, Dodge Foundation, Pen Women, and Martha’s Vineyard Creative Writing Institute. Her four poetry collections include the award-winning My Body Lives Like a Threat (FlowerSong Press, 2022), My Body is not an Apology (Finishing Lines Press, 2021), Language of the Wound is Love (FlowerSong Press, 2025). She was recently inducted as an honored listee for the 125-year-old Marquis Who’s Who. A 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project, and a Four-Time State Level Winner for the NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Poetry Award, Megha is a member of National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), The Artists Forum (USA), ArtPride (NJ), and United Nations Association-US Chapter. She has also been chosen as a featured poet for the 2024 Dodge Poetry Festival. Her widely anthologized poems, essays, and other works discuss her experience as a first-generation immigrant and woman of color. Her 900++ works have been widely featured in print, online journals, public exhibits, and anthologies. Her co-edited anthology The Medusa Project and other works have been selected to be sent to the moon in 2025 as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and her 14-year-old son. Find her at https://linktr.ee/meghasood.
Jacob Jardel (he/they) is a CHamoru writer, scholar, and educator born in Guåhan (Guam), raised in California and Oklahoma, and currently based in Kansas City. He’s currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Humanities with a focus in English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A former Editor for The Sosland Journal and The Central Dissent, his work has appeared in The 580 Mixtapes Vol. 1, Fanachu’s Voices of the Diaspora zine, and No. 1 Magazine. He is also a member of the Garden Party Collective, through which he published his poetry chapbook Full-Blooded CHamaole in 2024. Online, Jacob lives at his website itsjacobj.com, on Instagram and Threads @itsjacobj, and sometimes on BlueSky @itsjacobj.bsky.social. Offline, he lives with his partner, his cat, and his ever-growing board game and Magic the Gathering collection.
