Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was everywhere, in museums and in movies, too. But those early images, lodged into my subconscious, weren’t inclusive or realistic, except for the 1936 Hollywood classic Green Pastures.

I like the idea of heaven, that is, paradise imagined. It is low-key political. And I think we should conceptualize our notions of heaven, one that is secular and functional. As Belinda Carlisle sang in the 80s, “Heaven is a place on earth.” Constructing one’s celestial city, one’s promised land, is empowering. It’s a radical act that forces us to imagine our freedom. It’s the place where our longings and sense of justice coalesce into a vision that we can work toward . . . that is, here, right now!

For example, if your vision of heaven doesn’t include environmental waste, then we can fight today against companies polluting rivers and waterways. Or, if your image of heaven is a planet where hate has no home and love permeates all of our interactions, then, we can advocate for human connections.

Over dinner recently, I inquired of friends what their “yonder” looks like. One said, it is a place where I know all the answers to the questions that have plagued me. Another said, all of my dogs are there.

Today’s poem critiques the damaging effect of canonical images of heaven, and all its associative patriarchal symbolism, while wishing for a mother’s release out of fear and into herself.

Voice Clear As
by Kemi Alabi

When my mom discovers heaven’s just a noise festival

the godchoir of all her loves breathing
unsnagged by asthma or Newport-dragged lung

the true song life makes untethered from a body 
tugged at last from the men who hold its reins

will she blame her pastors (like I did)
for Sunday portraits of pooled white gold?

Will she miss the wooden flute of her body,
mourn the days corner-propped, cloaked in dust

too pious to disturb a room’s skin cells 
and stray hair with her sound

snapped awake at the nightmare of a slip fringe,
the private note sung aloud?

Or, unburdened by hell,

will she exhale
and hear the bells?

“Voice Clear As” by Kemi Alabi from AGAINST HEAVEN © 2022 Kemi Alabi. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press.