Tracing
Tracing
My mother has two, six-inch long scars
on the front of her shoulders
as if heaven made a mistake
and stitched wings on the wrong side
and angels had to saw them off.
But truthfully, while playing basketball,
the bird of her bone simply fell
from the nest of her joint.
She was opened by a surgeon’s knife
differently than when she was opened
for my brother and me to pass through,
but still, my brother and I found the knitting
of our mother’s body familiar
as she let us trace the scars
in the summer when she wore
her bathing suit.
Noah Davis’ second collection of poems The Last Beast We Revel In was published by CavanKerry Press in April 2025. His first book Of This River was selected for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry. Davis earned his MFA in poetry at Indiana University and has published work in The Sun, Best New Poets, Poet Lore, Southern Humanities Review, The Year’s Best Sports Writing, Orion, Southern Humanities Review, North American Review, and Chautauqua among others. Davis was also a Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the recipient of the 2018 Jean Ritchie Appalachian Literature Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University.
