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 News, Calyx, The Chattahoochee Review, The 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.

HORMESIS TRUMPS DRUG RULES

by Fran Davis

"Meet Ed Calabrese, Who Says a Little Pollution Can Be Good For You" —Mother Jones, February 19, 2019

EPA—call home—you’ve gone too far
axing toxic standards
            no exposure level safe
in favor of
hormesis?

Pollutants in low doses
induce adaptive responses
the hormetic scientist blares
bullhorn provided by big agro,
big chemical.

No exposure level safe
is such an onerous bar
when toxins can be taken in doses
to booster adaptability.

Monsanto, Syngenta and Dow are singing hallelujah.

Insecticides, fungicides, herbicides
those deadly bug killing, weed killing,
fungi killing - cides
may be good for us,

might not cause cancer, distrupt hormones,
frazzle neurons, mess with reproduction
if taken
in little whiffs, quick licks, tiny sips.

Proper dosage is the thing,
a smidgeon of Imidacloprid,
spurned by Europeans, but what do they know?
Still the most popular insecticide on earth.

Please thank Bayer Cropscience for their efforts on your behalf.

Bring on the neonics
5,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT,
no worries. Robot bees are coming soon,
haven’t you heard?

The sweet air hovering over strawberry rows,
Chloropicrin,
active ingredient in tear gas
may help us adapt to
tear gas.

Sell-out to agrochemical chimeras?
Ignore those faint cries, EPA.
The big guys have landed a scientist shill.
In the era of T***p
rules can be ditched like Roundup snuffs weeds.

Passionate about food safety, Fran Davis was so furious to learn the EPA might lower standards for toxics she had to launch a word protest. She lives and writes in coastal California. Her work has appeared in TheNewVerse.News, newspapers, magazines, travel books and print and online journals.

O'BRADY CROSSES ANTARCTICA

by Fran Davis

"Crossing Antarctica: How the Confusion Began

and Where Do We Go From Here"—ExplorersWeb, January 9, 2019

ice   ice   ice
     solo man
sastrugi  beat  your heart
                 the sled   your life
up  and  over
ridge  and  trough

sky  and  ice
meld  to  white
     muscles only
                  read   the miles
ridge  and  trough
ice  shelf  sings

arctic  sleep
frigid  fingers flex
      grip  the  dream
                twenty-five below
up  and  over
ridge  and  trough

why  why  why
     solo man
in  deep flow state
                    sastrugi  beat
the  losing  ice  
yield  to  frozen  heart

Fran Davis writes a column for Coastal View News in California. Her work has been published in TheNewVerse.News, travel books, periodicals and numerous print and online journals.