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.

LIZARD DAYS

by Alejandro Escudé

A lizard, small, on my walk along 

the largest airport in the country,

dead, curled, fetus-like, so swift

they are as they shoot back toward

the ivy mounds. At times I imagine

how many trash bins would the 

lizards fill if they were all collected

from the overgrowth—so I take

with my iPhone a photo of him,

Cretaceous little being, extinct, 

and think about the latest warning

issued to all Apple users, a hack

where they could take control,

absolute control, the newscaster

asserts, of your phone. I yearn

for a return to those lizard days

when I couldn’t carry around

a sea of digital pirates, both legal

and illegal, a neon mind-maze,

yet enough data to assume society’s 

panoptic perch. I choose to keep 

from running another space race

with my phone, contemplate

the deadness of a dead lizard

on the sidewalk as monolithic 

shadows of planes, like the foot-

prints of a dinosaur accelerated 

in time, mesh onward to the west.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE CONSTITUTION AND A SPRIG OF RUE

by David Chorlton

     Clarence Thomas says American citizens are seemingly

     'more interested in their iPhones' than 'their Constitution'

 

Because an iPhone knows

the difference between a single-shot musket

and an automatic weapon;

because the Constitution never mentioned

an abortion but if you ask Siri

she will direct the question to a source explaining

the what and how of it; a source

incidentally unavailable in seventeen-eighty-seven.

One little know-all tablet

fitting comfortably in the hand

can tell you where to turn to reach a stated

destination, connect to the latest baseball scores,

and provide a recipe. But even an iPhone

can’t tell behind

which desk a pupil ought to shelter, or

where the emergency exit is

to get away from someone openly carrying.

Its time to reload

the letters in the Constitution’s “chuse”

with the neatly rounded “oo” that brings

choose up to modern usage.

Ask Siri when the wire coat hanger

was invented. She’ll say Eighteen sixty-nine.

For what was used in earlier

times, Benjamin Franklin advised the use

of an abortifacient to resolve

“the misfortune” of an unwanted pregnancy . . .

while an old Sephardic song

tells of Una Matica de Ruda, the sprig of rue

as a gift from the young man

who has fallen in love.

David Chorlton came to live in Arizona in 1978 and always loved the desert. The land has come to be a part of much of his writing, while other aspects of political and social life present more troubling questions. 

THINKING ABOUT LOVE DURING COVID AND COUPS

by Susan Vespoli

I’ve been thinking about the Hopi Prophecy as told to me

by a friend, how we would find ourselves in a rushing river,

our body a soggy vessel careening toward the unknown. And the Hopi 

instruction was to notice who traveled beside us, not to flail 

or cling to the shore, but to trust the water. I’ve been thinking 

about the deep bass voice and compelling smell of an armpit, a man 

who sang lyrics into my ear, leaned around me as I washed a pan, 

crooned, I just can’t live without you, sister golden hair surprise, 

how he vanished with that torso he’d spooned around me, 

strapped into his own life vest, his SUV growing smaller 

as it exited the street in front of my house where I’ve stayed 

mostly alone since March, and how the ones who’ve held 

my hand and head above water have done so through Zoom

screens or contained in chiweenie fur or while flouncing 

around the living room in a size 6x little girl’s net skirt. How comfort 

has come via iPhones on speaker, text boxes, Words with Friends 

app chats, or from the masked employees at Jiffy Lube, 

a uniformed ballet of them who unscrew, drain, pour fluid, 

bow, you’re welcome, smile with eyes, say, you’re okay now,

reset the Need Maintenance light that flashed on my dash.

Susan Vespoli has been holed for almost a year in Phoenix, where she's written poetry, led writing circles on Zoom for writers.com, ridden her bike, and walked her dogs. Her work has been published in The New Verse News, Rattle, Nasty Women Poets Anthology, Mom Egg Review, Nailed Magazine, and others.

BEST FACE FORWARD

by George Held

Image: Selfie by Kresten Forsman

Reinvention, America’s
Most alluring cosmetic, now
Flourishes on social media.

Depressed or bored with how
You look, just change the foto
On Facebook and take a bow

With the newly enhanced you to
Wow your followers and friends;
Just watch the “likes” pile up, the “So

Cutes!” and “Awesomes!” making amends
For your blues and boosting self-esteem
Until some new rejection sends

You to take an iPhone selfie that you deem
A darling reflection of your best self-image,
Just the photograph that will redeem

You in the eyes of others, make you the rage
Of the moment on Instagram, whatever.
Yes, the chance to reinvent our visage

Proves again the genius of the founders
Of “Face”book – long may its format last
While we forever change our pictures

To meet the faces that we delete so fast
Online, blowing off each other’s horns,
That we have lost our sense of the past.

Try as we might, we cannot be reborn
Like our faces, however cosmeticized,
And inevitably age turns its scorn
 
On all of us. When you’ve compromised
Your pilgrim face and bookmarked your still life,
Your soul cannot try on another size.

George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out soon from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.