Queens

"Queens" is a song by the band Misterwives on their debut album, Our Own House. The song is narrated by a young woman reflecting on her experiences as a child and a teenager. She seems to be speaking to anyone who believes her hometown is less than adequate, and explains to her audience that her home was "not very pretty, but tough as stone". She is trying to convince her listeners that appearance isn't everything, and that often times the ugly things are the most meaningful.

The song uses many poetic devices to get this message across. The first instance is in the lyric "summer sun, we would run far away from our fears". Normally, fears are thought of as being kept inside a person, locked up within the deepest part of their being. This line, however, implies that the place where the narrator comes from is such a safe haven that people are able to escape from their inner demons. This place is so magical that a person can run away from the one thing they shouldn't be able to run away from; they can run away from themselves.

The next use of poetry that the song employs comes in the stanza "My Queens is a queen/Not talking bright lights and shiny things/But we always made it work/Building castles out of dirt". The narrator comes from Queens, New York. When she compares Queens to a queen, it confuses the audience and makes them work to find the true meaning. The line "building castles out of dirt" adds to the theme of the song, that even though her town looks dirty and blemished from the outside, only those who have experienced life on the inside will appreciate its true worth.

Another use of poetic devices is when the singer states "bought my first keys at fifteen/not for a car, play my songs at every shitty drive wall". The first line makes the listener assume that she is talking about a car, but the next line explains that she is not. The lyric "play my songs at every shitty drive wall" gives the audience just enough detail to conclude that the singer is talking about a keyboard. This line also adds to the meaning of the poem, because even though the singer was performing in "shitty" places, these places clearly gained her enough traction and fame to get her onto bigger and better things. This song is clearly poetic and would not be as effective were it not for its multiple uses of poetry.