Francesca Chabrier

global widespread panic

There was a room
and we were
two people in it.
You were the most
difficult thing
in the room.
When you screamed
it went black and became
a little bit smaller.
I put my face
against your ear
and could hear the wind.
There was also the sun.
Then July
and a woman.
We were just breathing
there inside the room.
This heart of mine
you kept saying.
We put on our swimsuits
in the dark.
It smelled like bread.
There was a pool,
but no pool light.
No way to make
buffalo shadows
with our hands.
There were curtains.
They were aquamarine
like the color of a pool.
The floor was flat,
but began moving.
First you were eaten
by the dark.
I was alone
and eating the curtains.

Rachel B. Glazer

global widespread panic

when birds fly its flexible order

men in spaceships spill jellybeans its beautiful

in the country trees wallpaper the sky
you see how design started
how cities make everyone share a view
whereas here I have my own

the appealing part of crime is
creative ways to break rules

youtube comments are repulsive
a dog is on morphine
but having ok dreams

put god away and embrace breakfast finally

a car is a massive way to make lines
a car is a weapon to wait inside
a style to sex the air
to generate ideas
to showcase metal

friends harass friends who show an interest in horseback riding
kids want apocalypse but settle for playstation

there is no panic but snow flurries
battles on the frog scale in a crowd scene

the stars are supposed to be crazy speeding lights
but shit they look peaceful to me

Jono Tosch

GLOBAL WIDESPREAD PANIC

Some people say the world began
When two blimps passed through
The barely formed ethereal wallpaper
Billions and billions of years ago

This is a fine theory indeed
But it does not explain how the blimps
Managed to penetrate the ether, nor
Where the blimps had come from.

These are not the only gaps in the theory.
Nothing is said about the color
Nor is anything said about the people
Who steered each blimp into the world.

Global widespread panic could be avoided
If someone could apply some spackle.
That spackle would probably be expensive
And fluffier than a jet puffed marshmallow.

And so it is we must prepare for doom.
We can already hear the troubadour band
Playing our music in the near future,
And the tune is a very popular tune.

Lily Ladewig

Global Widespread Panic: Thursday Styles Edition

White Is the New Yellow
Long Live the Dress (For Now)
Men in Plaid Do Mix It Up
Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend
The Man Date
Duck and Cover: The New Survivalism
Rosé’s Renaissance
How to Live Longer Without Really Trying
Eco-Friendly Paths to Exfoliation
How to Dress For Less and Less
How to Dress For Apocalypse
I Love What You Didn't Do To Your Chipped Nails
Orange Is the New White
Hard Times but Your Lips Look Great
Instant Message, Instant Apocalypse
It's Not Easy Being Less Rich
Apocalypse but Your Lips Look Great
Proletarian Bull's Eye at Barney's
I Love What the Apocalypse Didn't Do To Your Chipped Nails
Cookbook Publishers Prepare To Think Small
Stretch Marks, an Unblessed Event
Rosé’s Apocalypse
A Girl's Life, With Highlights
Baby's First Bikini Wax
It's Not Easy Being the Apocalypse
Apocalypse is the New Orange
Proletarian Apocalypse at Barney's
An Apocalypse, With Highlights
Baby's First Apocalypse
Apocalypse's First Bikini Wax
Cookbook Publisher's Prepare for Apocalypse
Apocalypse, an Unblessed Event
Pink is The New Apocalypse

Ari Feld

Global Widespread Panic

Exhausted by insomnia, I find this porch
and leave the dawn
to incant itself.
Hours seem to circulate, meteors missile the night, my hearing
recovers— stations blipping between the static— and the rest
of my senses remain
indecipherable. It’s clear that I’ve escaped.
I even find an abandoned beer.
Next I hear earthmovers or the earth is moving
and I hear it.
Then the rain stops and I can see
that the static is the clatter of foot traffic in the street— citizens
becoming something else. No slim tumult this, which explains
why the homeowner
doesn’t bother to kick me off his porch.
It’s the eve of everything else and we don’t have to ask anymore:
What’s happening to us, is someone here a doctor, who’s an orphan,
who’s a killer?
We know.

Gabe Durham

Global Widespread Panic


Strangers hit me,
unprovoked. This is not so unusual.
Our team lost, let's knock over a car.
Our team won, let's raid an electronics store.
People riot for all sorts of supposed reasons
but always, always it comes back to the thing
in the air. The aroma. All we know:
If we don't now put a rock through a plate
glass window then when? I'm intimate with
the aroma. I produce it. Thus my body is daily
subjected to single-serving riots.

I fantasize:
an epidemic,
widal, globespread.
A celebrity gets it,
gets what I got and
raises awareness. A
weekly support group
where we hug so gently.

I expect you to say: Somebody hits you,
make em regret it. That's an excellent strategy
in most cases. For me it exacerbates beatings.
I topple you,
you're up
in a flash,
red-faced,
veins jutting.
It will take you
on average, oh say
a minute and a half
to get the beating me
out of your system.
Me? you say.
Not me.
But yes.
You.

Seth Landman

Global Widespread Panic


You like celebrating the landing
signal, the tower.

Down the elevator moved yesterday's fichus.

We moved down Elizabeth Street
and Elizabeth felt like a reptile in the sun

a gesture from an airplane,

material for two worlds.

I want to break
these thoughts,

to break over an audience

and feel odd for a while and perfectly sane.

To carry your panic in the apartment,

in the lingering sense things
in a system won't turn to you.

Year-to-year do you consider
achitectural vision.

In this, that you are near me,
and sign screaming inside.

That I drove the truck and that I hear you.

Starting over among the fragments building

as the crowd cheers.

Willie Bordwine

Global Widespread Panic


seacoast happened to be in Vermont
so Oklahoma
                       took a chance and speculated –
too many designations to this Leap Day
blizzard in the third-quarter – all undercarriage
showing – they both gave
                       over to exhaustive tantrums

this is not dissonance none of the time
field
                       half-mown is
                       half-deaf with half-dandelions
un-notched when rain bellies up – upwards
at first as electric air lifts it
petal, chaff, and seed
                       emulsified – field
lost to its edge and slashed

no idea either could claim was its own
mother's or
                       even an argument could subsist –
just tiring – no liquidity about the liquid
at all
                       nary a flatus of proven monikers
guessed at the maligned
                       fear each held
in fragrances of their trees – brittle clear
to the tap anchoring agency.

Lesley Yalen

GLOBAL WIDESPREAD PANIC


Not yet the hoped-
For détente


The Peace Council


Just beyond these squares


Beyond my cells


Window washers
Their uninsured wives


Oh, window, my window
Where are you


Out
My window


Between me and this
Landmass


Continuous
Continent


Incontinent
Police


Afraid Public
Masked congress


Assassins


Please, Righteous
Righter of wrong thinking


I sense the coming of the anti-crisis


You do not need to resend your message
You do not need to ressend it to me

Phillip Thompson

Global Widespread Panic


Before the grinning lake will accept me,
a rejection slip, an oxbow fear,

a glaze of retarded beliefs, holds me
firm that hell contains my grandmother

and her reading glasses. In holy stoup turn,
we trick-shot out, some fear-welded to the rope until

we return to land, smashing our pecan-skulls
on the tormented live oak, the grandfather of the oxbow.

This is the way to celebrate a butcher's life,
what he co-penned for us, his sage-like strokes

that garnered for us our daily trawls, our prophetic stake-burnings,
anything that plucked us from the beard of Christ.

Ricardo Maldonado

Global Widespread Panic


The history of hell is olive warfare, tackled
Lumbar product.

Somewhere, cautery had to exist. Not even
The devil procured the complement of bracken.

Federal ends, yea: so began the alligator.

Chris Hosea

GLOBAL WIDESPREAD PANIC


There is a floral pattern, and there
and there and here. Here is a rising pie, being a part of that
apple pie, what you can't eat, what
you saw on walls, no end to it.

There are no seams
in her address, her warm scent a part
of what is leaving you, what
you walk with
as you walk away from
hometowns where always
TVs blaze in window bays.

Just walk on over
the edge, and you will
fall and fall
into forever which is also a flowering
season where there is
mold on graves and stones a picnic
place for you and me.

Lay out the flowered cloth and sit or lie
down with glasses of wine
and sandwiches of cheese and
you can complain or just shut up while
exhaust from jets stripes the sky

and how is just sitting there different
from taking a knife
to your favorite
tree, carver of hearts
or names, you.

Luke Bloomfield

Global widespread panic.


An email complaint to the bureau of propaganda.

Combing through a proclamation for redundancies.

Standing on one leg on a platform atop a wooden pole for three days.

Ethnographic references derived from 90s comedies.

A plot to sabotage a hot air balloon convention ending in sub-Saharan tribal battles.

Ending a poem by saying "put that in your scat and fling it."

Hunting for carbuncles.

"Item number nine: various ways to enthrall an infant."

A bassist and a spaceship an unlikely pair unless you think about it.

A crowd making sport of a bull.

Getting drunk among animals.

A senile playing leapfrog from one moment to the next.

Giving emoticons a try until your friends start falling away.

A pair of frail absinthe drinkers.

A ladybug crawling across a black and white backdrop.

Revolving doors.

Revolvers.

Mustachios.

A step-by-step online instruction manual demonstrating the full body wax.

Ordering a trebuchet on ebay.

A lifetime pass to a reptile farm in France.

A freelance comment page moderator.

Aitch tee tee pee colon back slash back slash double-you double-you dot.

Ian Wang

Global Widespread Panic


It's nice out, finally, like Florida.
Tony Cirillo is wearing bowling shoes,
tie and jacket, no shirt,
and he's regretting all of it.
The grad student-cum-professor brings
them outside and says,
If you want to do Sports, it's okay, just try
to pick one story and concentrate on it.
Next to Tony sits Kelly Morgan, the
prettiest girl of the class, leggy, pale,
long reddish hair, expresses her
bewilderment at the little fact of alcohol
swabbing before lethal injection. What
is the point? Isn't it a waste of an alcohol
swab? Well, the point is, says Andy
Nguyen, who has long set the
goal of hooking up with Kelly before
sophomore year ends, it's just ironic,
don't you see. Kill the bacteria
before you kill the person, that's
the least they can do, so they can
say they are giving a clean death.
Kelly reads her story a little more
and gets up to go talk to the teacher.
Andy whistles after her. Tony looks
over at him. Tony is sweating
and still regretting. Andy stretches
his arm muscles under the sun.
"Ooh, hot!"

Anjali Khosla

Global Widespread Panic


Eight days to the wedding.
The DJ canceled due to a bout of TB.
The venue hall burned down arsonistically.
The bride's sister thoroughly cheated.
In retaliation, the bride's sister's groom slept
for four days & ordered buckets o' fiery wings.
He woke early & ran into his third forlorn DUI.
Eight days to the wedding
& the mother-of-the-maid-of-honor
did what she'd always threatened to do.
She connipted, then died, ostrich & peacock.
The five-star chef inadvertently amputated
& the bruised invites still haven't gone out.
The bride spends her day on the fuscia phone
sobbing while the groom mows unnecessary lawns.
In the evening, he rubs the backs of her sagging knees.
The organist practices Brahms in the basement.
The pipes rattle & leak.

Brian B. Corkspit

Global Widespread Panic


Spliced winged parabola
Wild glob disappearance
Paraplegia-blinded cows
Clapboard-wielding peas
Inappreciable dad glows
Lopsided algebraic pawn
Inapplicable sword? Egad!
Incapable wired lapdogs
Bandaged pillowcase rip
Oblige a crawdad's nipple
A clipped owl's gabardine

You can make so much out of global widespread panic.

Mike Young

GLOBAL WIDESPREAD PANIC

And there was no global widespread Ativan.
This was a look-at-my-face-does-it-look-
gotcha-it-doesn't-look-gotcha-it-looks-
oh-shit kind of deal. Woe usurped the
deeds. Snakes ate the food stamps.
God's wheelchair hit a baby sapling.
Not even a nice shower felt that nice.
UN officials took to wearing charcoal
baseball makeup. I stole a vat of
cottage cheese and sold it for hot
sluts. We set the laundromats on fire,
by which I mean OMG LAUNDROMAT PARTY!
We didn't worry about having grand
kids or copies of The Lion King for
them. Nobody invented new aftershaves.
No history was coveted, not even by the
apologists or for marketing purposes.
God's tirejack fucked His tennis racquet.
When Shasta Lake went dry, we held a
contest: EMERGENCY REFILL IDOL (TM).
The winners: iced coffee, Dr. Pepper,
benzoyl peroxide, breast milk and Tang.
Plenty of disgruntled cum jockeys felt
left out, which didn't seem, you know,
"shocking." If by this point you're like
"wait a minute what about eternal grace"
then I guess you never went four wheeling
naked with your best friends in August
and ate hot dogs and drank champagne
and made up songs about each other
and traded sunglasses with each other
and graded the dawn with each other
and did coke off each others' eyelashes
without thinking of how to tell the story
later, because later is a crosseyed donkey.
Hang on. Is someone in trouble, boy? Shhh.
Say what? What do you mean we're fired?

Luke Freedman Phelan

The Global Widespread Panic


The Global Widespread Panic
Was first detected in the Rational Markets.
It jumped to some of the better
Lower Houses of Parliament,
The way these things do.

No one understood it,
That was what made it a Panic,
Though much ink was spilt,
Or so they said on the TV.

At first I thought it amusing,
We hadn't had a good one for a while,
Not even that time the Asian Tigers
All caught the Flu.

But it spread to the chickens,
And after the third straight morning
Of nervous eggs for breakfast,
Well, I was starting to get worried.

In parts of Eastern Europe
A rat became the unit of currency.
But we in the West
Eschewed such histrionics,
Clutching our dollars and euros,
Trying to believe.

When it was over,
If it was over,
Some said Panic was the new normal,
And Pink the new Black.
So when we'd adjusted,
And cowering and wailing
Gave way to building and clapping,
Many said 'Oh, it was a good thing,
Cleaned out the system,
Out with the Old
And in with the New'
And you can imagine what else.

But I am less certain,
More or less always,
Cultivated abulia
Does serve me well.

Edward Mullany

Global Widespread Panic


In a dressing room of a department

store in a mall where women mostly

shopped, a pair of unbought jeans lay

where they'd fallen on the floor.

Emily Renaud

Global Widespread Panic


I cannot address this growing
Sense of urgency, the civil unrest,
Or your current desire for me to
"Make a difference."

It's not because I don't want to,
Or because I'm hurriedly pruning
A domesticated animal.

I am, right now, only using language
To lie, and my callous words
Would be too splendid, too joyful
To touch the sick and dying.

So I must ask you to refrain from
Thinking of me if ever the time
To act is now, or only I can help.