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Saturday, January 20, 2024

TO THE iPHONE FALLING 16,000 FEET FROM AN AIRPLANE

by Fran Davis


Representative image created using AI via India Today

Cuong Tran is the man whose iPhone fell out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when the plane lost a door plug during the flight, which was going from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, on January 5. His phone was recovered on the side of a road and miraculously survived the drop of thousands of feet: It still had half of its battery's charge and was in airplane mode, opened to an email containing a baggage claim receipt.— Business Insider, January 13, 2024



A fierce gust 

ripped out like a rude birth

to incomprehensible air

propellered by wind

strong steel case

glinting sun

blue sky

dark earth

 

turning and turning

the hawk’s gyre

compass berserk with spinning

electrons scattered

hectic static stilled

 

freefall

calm at the farthest edges

deep silence of

time unscaled

 

violent jolt

jiggering compass

shuddering apps

readjustments

where is

where is

the tower

 

glass face swept clean

thumbs probing

questions

that can’t be answered



Fran Davis is a journalist living on California’s South Coast. Her writing appears in magazines and travel books. Her prose and poems have been published in New Verse NewsCalyxThe Chattahoochee ReviewThe Vincent Brothers Review, Reed Magazine, Passager, and several anthologies. She is a winner of the Lamar York prize York prize for nonfiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee.