Distributed for CavanKerry Press
The Last Beast We Revel In
An unflinching look at the intimate, dwindling natural world and our desire for human connection.
Noah Davis’s The Last Beast We Revel In coalesces around love for one’s romantic partner, family, community, and the natural world. As the Appalachian Mountains continue to suffer from environmental catastrophes and abuses, the need to discover joy within the human and greater-than-human world is essential. In these poems, we travel with black bears and brook trouts, exploring old tunnel mines, summer rivers, the remains of meth houses, and tasting the sweetness of August tomatoes. Davis’s poems balance revery, mourning, lust, and love while wading the rivers and meandering through the deep hollows of Appalachia’s enduring landscape.
Noah Davis’s The Last Beast We Revel In coalesces around love for one’s romantic partner, family, community, and the natural world. As the Appalachian Mountains continue to suffer from environmental catastrophes and abuses, the need to discover joy within the human and greater-than-human world is essential. In these poems, we travel with black bears and brook trouts, exploring old tunnel mines, summer rivers, the remains of meth houses, and tasting the sweetness of August tomatoes. Davis’s poems balance revery, mourning, lust, and love while wading the rivers and meandering through the deep hollows of Appalachia’s enduring landscape.
Table of Contents
After felling every beetle-blighted ash on the ridge
How Blood Becomes the River
Places Familiar
The September Side of Light
Poem Found on Three Springs Run
I Ask What We Are
Heron Heart
Appalachian Lust Song
Mountain Salve
Conception
Trout Heart
Portrait of the Beloved with Rain
What I Hear as Crow Song
Genesis
On the last day of rifle season
Penance
Telling My Beloved What I Lost on the Mountain
Arguing Again in the Afternoon
Hound Heart
Poem Sewn into My Hunting Jacket
In April with my beloved
Prayer for the People Who Pulled the Mountaintops Back Like a Fingernail
With My Beloved Upon Waking from a Nap in a Field a Week Before the First Haying
July Drought
Tick Triptych
The morning after my mother saw my beloved and me sleeping in the same bed
Mercy Song
March
My Brother and I Watch Dogs Chase Trains Over the Pig Hole Bridge
In Bed with My Beloved and an Elk Leg
Human Heart
I like to believe
Wedding Poem
Poem Sewn into my Briar Pants
Solstice Bluegills
Here, Long Before My Father’s Death
Pink Lady Slipper
Mother
Bee Heart
My Beloved Asks
Marriage Poem
From the valley
God came to me on County Road 26
Think of Lips and What Earth Needs for Vegetables
My brother fought
Dream with My Beloved and Honeycomb Ending with a Line from Yeats
My father gives me a knife
The Last Beast We Revel In
How Blood Becomes the River
Places Familiar
The September Side of Light
Poem Found on Three Springs Run
I Ask What We Are
Heron Heart
Appalachian Lust Song
Mountain Salve
Conception
Trout Heart
Portrait of the Beloved with Rain
What I Hear as Crow Song
Genesis
On the last day of rifle season
Penance
Telling My Beloved What I Lost on the Mountain
Arguing Again in the Afternoon
Hound Heart
Poem Sewn into My Hunting Jacket
In April with my beloved
Prayer for the People Who Pulled the Mountaintops Back Like a Fingernail
With My Beloved Upon Waking from a Nap in a Field a Week Before the First Haying
July Drought
Tick Triptych
The morning after my mother saw my beloved and me sleeping in the same bed
Mercy Song
March
My Brother and I Watch Dogs Chase Trains Over the Pig Hole Bridge
In Bed with My Beloved and an Elk Leg
Human Heart
I like to believe
Wedding Poem
Poem Sewn into my Briar Pants
Solstice Bluegills
Here, Long Before My Father’s Death
Pink Lady Slipper
Mother
Bee Heart
My Beloved Asks
Marriage Poem
From the valley
God came to me on County Road 26
Think of Lips and What Earth Needs for Vegetables
My brother fought
Dream with My Beloved and Honeycomb Ending with a Line from Yeats
My father gives me a knife
The Last Beast We Revel In