Dave Malone

Tribute Band at the Roadhouse

                    When your time has come
                    You’ll accept the blade
                    —Twisted Sister 

They’ve got the rock-hard guitars 
and the eyeliner 
too. All that’s 

missing is a non-drinking 
Danny “Dee” Snider. 
The quaking

shaking dark thunder voice 
of an underworld
sage with poise

or poison. Pick your blade. 
The tribute band 
won’t crusade 

for the bad boys of rock-n-roll,
just imitate a fashion, 
in this mud and beer hole,

but we don’t necessarily 
blame them. For we’ve come too
for posterity 

as if the center will hold 
for decades to come. 


“Moonlight Cocktail” on 45

Need a few lovesick lyrics?
These will do and put
the perfect physic 

in dreamy dopamine. You’ll
forget who you are
in the song’s dual 

meaning, drinking all night long
in blue-nighted bliss.
First kiss, the last kiss, 

a record player scratches 
love’s eternal disasters.

Dave Malone is a poet and screenwriter from the Missouri Ozarks. His most recent poetry collection is Bypass (Kelsay Books, 2023). His work has been featured on NPR and appeared in Midwest Review, Fourteen Hills, and Red Rock Review.