Airplane Reading

Emirates Entertainment

by Hilary Sideris


Out of contact with air traffic control, we sit for hours on the tarmac at Newark, watch The Apprentice. Behind us, a man begs for water. The flight attendant smiles but brings nothing. We fasten seatbelts over our bladders. Jeremy Strong is Roy Cohn, who loves to corrupt boys, tap phones. Sebastian Stan makes Fred Trump’s kid from Queens look not so bad. Wide-eyed, he marvels, Isn’t that illegal? Patches of Kaposi sarcoma plague Cohn’s face. He’s dying of AIDS, which he denies. We passengers will die, too, possibly tonight. The radar screens go black. Space X debris falls from the sky.

 

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Threshold Altitudes

by Al Scott Pearce Baker

To fly is to forfeit identity. What boards the plane is not what leaves it. In the sky, the self disintegrates. The body persists, but the soul enters eclipse. I have never flown without feeling that I am dying. Not meta...

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