Meshell Unchained

Black woman, play your guitar. Someone slanted back in perfect pitcher poise, with a leg hoisted at the mark and pelted towards you, the gift. The hurler watches you from a great distance; watches it fluttering from antiquity, skipping through the realms like a stone bouncing across the surface of a lake. Your heart is in the song. Play your guitar. Send your lusciousness out like silky bubbles just blown; mystify them. You sing, like a chanteuse in a sequin robe, with flowers pinned just above your ear, quivering under that solitary indigo light. But you do it your way, as debonair as a boxer that has mastered the use of a musical instrument. You sway aggressively in a black dress shirt. You are fragile too, guiding the neck and fretboard like a wand or a conductor’s baton, smirking underneath your strawberry red glasses, knowing what you know. You render the crowd immobile with each tug of the string. You moan, floating atop the baseline like froth over ale, summoning from the depths the sounds that have come from a line of once captive women, now free – but none more boundless than you center stage. Goddamnit, black woman, play your guitar.