Baba’s Home is the Sound of a Distant Thundering

^{for Lebanon}

Vahagn shaking his fists at the heavens
stomping shrapnel until dirt was soaked a crimson

that might convey to the creatures in the clouds
that they were demons, not deities.

If heaven is occupied by multi-
nationals of sanctified annihilation,

then the relocation orders will direct
you toward the outskirts of cedar-charred hell.

Cheap land. Food desert. Bring rugs to protect
your sole from flaying flesh. No, paradise

is love, even when immolated
under white phosphorous raining from the sky

like perpetrators’ tears—dry, stifled by hate-
laced captagon. I’ve got to hand it to you,

even your sleep is implicated.