seven things to call heaven by Oz Leshem (15, New Mexico)*

[Content warning: strong language]

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                            let me start off by saying, i don’t know jack shit about heaven

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on the first day of dying, you will be         sifted 
              you are debris 
              from the wreckage 
                              of your past life     and your mind     was the captain. i assume, 
                                                            you woke
with a smile larger than jupiter                 with your eyelids barely          able    to close
               because you can’t stop staring at her, and all the things she is made of 

heaven        you are here.        ground yourself on the bed of flowers of this construct

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        the heaven:
        who is your first love staring at you, or
        who is your first love with a spear in their back.  see, your heaven is    a risk. the light of your hip hop shines brighter, because you can finally shake neighborhood nip’s hand, pac’s, or biggie’s

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                  maybe it dances in a dive bar, a poetry slam, or anywhere we come together
heaven has no gender
 it is a nate marshall
  or a tuesday smoked 
   on apple wood
    a planet, or axis mundi with rocks so
     sharp they become
your first love as the language of your ancestors; strung with phife dawg alphabetics.

    heaven is not finishing the-

heaven is all the things you don’t see in your textbooks

                                                  it isn’t physical or kamasutra or hallucinogenic
             heaven doesn’t need to be a stereotype or religious or atheist
heaven is a woman’s body. the sun who is tethered to her shadow.

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                                                                                                                                                            heaven is southside
                                                                                                                                                                      serial arsonist
                                                                                                                                                                 socialist creature
                                                                                                                              conserving culture to breed freedom. 
                                                                           heaven is the magic when you feel
                                                                               the moon pause your footsteps

                                                           heaven is when you back track those footprints to find
                                                 yourself
perhaps it is
           chicago
                 it is albuquerque
or its stars
                                                    and all the homies who spoke with wake self.

                                                                                                                                              the beat and the ones who break     them                        and them who spin for forty seven years.
                                                                                                                                      it is the block party in west bronx
                                                  it is the culture of asking for extra green
                                                                                 christmas 
                                                                            maybe, even red

heaven isn’t that far
    how would we know? 
        heaven is your words
    and mouth when you
swallow saliva for another one to come out,             the gums that hold your mouth together
            in case you hear someone say racist shit in a public place that is primarily trump lovers so nobody questions them, so if you make a comment you will get stares
        as if you were their devil                        there aren’t any gates before heaven
                            it isn’t biblical
                            or a sonnet.
                        heaven is a trans girl
        HEAVEN is all caps
    or written in the space between each letter         (H E A V E N)
it's arabic or parenthese 
        chippewa 
        german or
            palestinian     is heaven in the clouds, or under the soil?

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viaduct dichotomy of human bone,
    it is the bruised marrow    after recess and it is the ice pack
        on your nose
                heaven is for anyone who listens
and especially:
    for the ones who don’t
                                                                                                                                                                   heaven ain’t white
                                                                                                                                            or the shit on pearly gates, cuz
                                                                                that heaven is bullshit
that heaven discriminate.

                                                      that heaven, this heaven, your heaven, a gold one
see; this heaven a construct
        that heaven sounds like the time i went to church with my christian friend for the first time. the woman who was teaching bible study    
                started her lecture by saying: the jews crucified jesus, as
if g-d didn’t make him jewish and born in palestine
                heaven is the bullshit that comes with a bar mitzvah
heaven is only open to straight aryan dudes who treat the bible
                like it's the only okay book to read

as if the torah or the quran had a different heaven.

            let me tell you that i don’t know anything about heaven,
                                    or the sound we should make 
when saying it.

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        is the real heaven what chance the rapper speaks of?
or is it an acid trip
a love letter,
flicks, chick flicks,
or flocks of people trying to understand what happens after you
die. trying to spend your whole life collecting the most points to win
heaven, to sleep in the same bed as g-d.

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                                                  heaven is a river that marks the few feet of borderland in between two nations
heaven is the purest form of groupthink, or heaven is the purest form of an individualist
                    heaven is what you make it, not anybody else's.

on the first day of living, you will be         sifted 
                you are debris 
                from the anchored 
                           heart of your mother         and her stomach     is the ship. i assume, 
                                                               you woke
cold with your eyelids barely       able    to breathe

earth    you are here.        ground yourself on the bed of flowers of this planet rock

    heaven:
    who is a home, or
    who is a home / land.    see, your earth is    a risk. the dim of your hip hop and
the march of your people. heaven is carved in your body and maybe
            it is okay    to not call it heaven

the march will soon begin, the organizers are passing out shirts saying, “defund the gatekeepers, strip down the wall! don’t gentrify this place!” you soon figure out, heaven is everything on earth
        and nothing more than a few articles that convinced you it was real.

so you, and your protest march to the capital building of heaven and scream, 

                        to hell
                        with that

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