Family Portrait
After James Allen Hall

When I say my moms 
I mean I slip Jesus in my mouth — 

a slab of white chocolate
sucking slow, sweetly 

the saliva doing its work toward
the razor blades.

 When I say my pops 
the pipes begin again 

their heat-clamor
the praise-latest of radiators the sound 

of Covid-pneumonia. 
I’m in the family dining room, the tablecloth 

a light-green linen —
a freshly mown, tear-gassed field.

 I’m writing by light of bourbon
and the late-night glow

 of poached eggs. Soon, the sun
through the wooden Venetians 

will make of this room 
a jail cell. I’ll be sleeping upright 

in my father’s usual spot
the head of this table. Picture 

the purple dogwood-explosion 
through the window 

behind me, and the bats huddling within —
the bats we’ll learn to beast.

Zoom Nation

Keep your cameras on if you are X if you are Y keep
your cam on if you Z keep thy body cams on them 
cops with your copeyes no copouts kids ain’t no bigger 

fry to fish you wish we was in person don’t ya ya wish 
we was outdoors more stream than fish is what I mean 
streaming not at all savage down this once raging gorge

from above my mask I cop a feel your black g-string
under your white skorts as you mount that jagged stone
just a few more steps till we smash the summit knock

our boots all up on them smoother wind scorched stones
keep your cameras on at the ready airplane mode so ya
don’t drain the juice for whatever found art on these

trails the feet no the feeling of daddy long legs the back
of my neck the light acupuncture a half pitch higher
than the sun’s grazing slow burn of my body this body

bag a redundant phrase when we hear the thump of
the body just tipped over the side of this stone throne
as some of us when the world is too steep too steeped

in shit would slither zig zag up the trail some would 
march straight through the granite but most would turn 
the fuck around turn it off for X for Y and Z behold

a swarm of gnats through this haze the beige shift of 
a deer just beyond them trees the shimmer of a spider web
a hovering red dragonfly a blue tail on a black salamander.

Timothy Ree is the son of Korean immigrants. He teaches literature and writing at a public high school in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, St. Katherine Review, and Peregrine Literary Journal of Amherst Writers & Artists. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cave Canem, Poets House, and the Academy for Teachers. He is a recipient of the Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize from the Bread Loaf School of English.