In another life, let’s start
an all-girl band called Raspberry Hairs.
Maddy on the drums, Nina on the bass,
Brooke with her guitar, Andrea with their cello.
Naira can sing; maybe Liv can learn piano.
Did you know those weird little hairs
are the leftovers of the raspberry’s
female reproductive organs? That’s a fact
like how proximity to a stage makes everybody
ten times hotter. What I miss about church is not God
but the music, those prayerful voices rising in unison.
These days I blow money on concerts
and sing so loud that I puke. Nietzche called it
Dionysian—this rapturous, myth-making power
that grounds us in our present and reunites us with our past.
It is the language of the body and soul,
of revolution and lamentation,
of middle school dances and the open road,
the language that time keeps.
It’s not about reproductive organs. It never was.
It’s about dancing and sweating, so in tune
with our bodies that we can’t help but transcend them.
In another life, rock out with me.
All of us clustered like drupelets ‘round the pit,
singing our throats hoarse until our voices are more
sensation that sound, vibrating up from the bass line in our chests.
How is it that this song rings inside us?
How is it we all know the words?
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Jane McBride (she/her) is a fiction writer and poet. Originally from the heart of the Rockies in Colorado, she now calls New York City home. Her poetry has appeared in the Rising Phoenix Review, the After Happy Hour Review, the Orchards Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. You can find more of her writing on her blog, Loose Baggy Monsters (with Jane McBride).