Noah Davis | Late Practice

Late Practice: poems by Noah Davis. Number 30 in our Keystone Chapbook Series, selected by series editors Karen J. Weyant and Jerry Wemple.

[ cover image: James Wicks, Magpie Alley Hoop ]

Publication:  July 24, 2026 [100 copies]
21 pages
ISBN 978-1-960693-37-2
$ 12.00

Noah Davis‘s second poetry collection, The Last Beast We Revel In, was published in 2025 by CavanKerry Press. Davis’s first collection, Of This River, won the Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry, and his poems and prose have appeared in The Sun, Orion, Best New Poets, The Year’s Best Sports Writing, Southern Humanities Review, Poet Lore, and North American Review among others. He also coedited the anthology A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia with Todd Davis and Caroyln G. Mahan that was published by University of Georgia Press. His work has been awarded a Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Jean Ritchie Appalachian Literature Fellowship. Davis earned an MFA from Indiana University. 

I once had a teammate

who was an oak tree
and blocked every three
taken from the far-left corner
of the first court, Mansion Park,
Altoona, Pennsylvania,
where the row houses
are now closer to the mansions
than the train barons
would have ever allowed.
Green leaves and budding
acorns fell around the disappointed
shooter’s shoes as I’d grab
the short board and pass the ball
ahead to my brother for a layup
unburdened by defenders.
There was no call to haul
the oak away, to cull a limb.
Every team needed another defender,
and shade before the sun fell
behind the ridge. We all seemed
to look around and wonder
where a tree should be if not here.

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