Flight 828

Flight 828 is more than just a setting in the poem as flight numbers are not really fixed descriptors of aircraft so much as their incarnations of what is inside the physical space of the airplane. When the speaker writes, “we leap up to become / Flight 828” (26-27), she is referring to a physical act of a collective of people assembling in a place as well as a figurate act of automatic unification and reification. A hitherto unnamed body, a group of unaffiliated people, assume a name for a short period and then dissolve. The shell of that unity is Flight 828, an interchangeable and recyclable moniker that only has contingent meaning within a finite temporal, spatial, and social context.

Gate 17

Gate 17 is the most specific physical location referred to in the poem. It is a discrete coordinate within the airport terminal. The gate is of course the cardinal orientation for...