Transplant

Scenery is a capsule. Too broad, too vague, 
too cross-disciplinary for it not to fold upon itself 
when being written. The mountains here
are green today, stoking the heights—
we’re in wildfire season. The air is puckered. 

I once had a tendency to drawl from within
humid days & cicada nights. Speech therapy; 
the sake of an escape. In such a short time, 
I thought life was full and formed. This,
an elegy of sorts. Days in foreign places

move quicker, the desert indistinguishable 
and repeating. Out here, they say language
is cartilage only so close to the bone. I disagree. 
Words are always boiled into a broth and fed upon. 
There are enough places to mean anything. Enough poems.

NOELLE HENDICKSON

Noelle Hendrickson is a lesbian poet and disabled educator proudly based in Utah. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Watershed Review, Queerlings Magazine, The Allegheny Review, Prism Review, and elsewhere. Find her at noellehendrickson.com.