Eulogy for a Metal Band by Nathan Graziano

A friend posted a video on social media
of his heavy metal band playing a gig
at The Ukraine Club last Saturday night.
The four middle-aged bandmates had lopped
off their heavy metal locks two decades ago
when looking for full-time work but kept
their long goatees and silver-hoop earrings
as a mitigated rebellion, a lonesome flag.

Mind Crime hadn’t played a paying gig
since 2006, and a former roadie for the band
who helped lug the instruments and amps
from the basement to the car to the bar
shot the video on his camera phone, hand
shaking as he shot devil horns into the air.

Dust swirled in front of a wooden stage
as the sound bounced from empty wall
to the next empty wall, but Mind Crime
played on, my friend clutching the microphone
like the head of a snake while shaking his finger
at an imaginary crowd, warning the three men
at the bar that they “had another thing coming.”

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, with his wife and kids. His books include Teaching Metaphors (Sunnyoutside Press), After the Honeymoon (Sunnyoutside Press) Hangover Breakfasts (Bottle of Smoke Press in 2012), Some Sort of Ugly (Marginalia Publishing in 2013), and My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014). Almost Christmas, a collection of short prose pieces, was published by Redneck Press in 2017. Graziano writes a baseball column for Dirty Water Media in Boston. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com.