Mark Cugini

Thick Slab

On the day your
best friend dies
I wake up on a
plush cloud of xenon
kicking rocks and
chirping biddies
on faraway coasts.
Two years ago he
was a trampoline,
but that was before
some drunk fuck
paved over our
muscle memories.
Nowadays I want
all the bubble coats—
I want bass blasts
and a thick slab of
loud-pounding
metal; I want
the low-hanging
service from
the cell phone
tower out there
in that redwood
costume. A thousand
bouquets of balloons
rot in the woods
while the rest
of my homies
spit hot fire about
the dance parties
they’re throwing
at the abandoned
mental institutions,
so we idle out in this
here municipal gravel pit,
drunk and full of benign malaise,
chanting
          let this all burn,
          let this lot burn ‘til
          this lot of us is charred.
This is how every eulogy
is supposed to end, but
no one hangs out in
parking lots anymore.

Mark Cugini's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Melville House, Hobart, Sink Review, Barrelhouse, NOÖ, Matchbook, and other publications. He’s a founding editor of Big Lucks, a contributor to HTMLGiant, and the curator of the Three Tents Reading Series in Washington, DC. His chapbook I'M JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE will be released in March 2014 from Ink Press.