Photo: Tiffany Bessire

At Rennie Harris Puremovement, the physicality of the dancers as well as discussions of personification in Emily Dickinson’s work at school made me think, “what emotion could have something to say better expressed as a person; what could this emotion’s choice of dress, action, and physical presence tell us?” The dancers, as they moved in and out of the spotlight, could tell us so much with those three things. I wondered what Justice could tell us.

Justice at work

by Sheerea Yu 

inspired by Rennie Harris/Puremovement - Nuttin’ But a Word


Justice puts on polished
black shoes
and straightens his tie, crimps—
his collar and leaves for work
with
a bouncy step.

He is full on righteousness
and arrogance, a dash of
bias, for flavor—
like salt,
Justice pats his belly
with practiced flair.

On his slate
desk his
card only reads,
Administer and Servant—
but lately he’s been
overstepping,
for that new promotion he wants.

Today there’s some
fun, some
unprecedented, some
eye-catching history; Justice stops—
considers—
deliberates—
and scrawls GUILTY
on the face of a policeman.

Yet Justice’s hand shakes,
his pen falters,
and suddenly—he remembers—the time—
he wanted to free the spider stuck
in the swing set pole,
just another child pressing close
against
hollow metal,
(ears gone numb from the chill)
but he learned the scrabbling
was only the creak, the clank of the chains,
as the wind blew.

Justice shuts his briefcase,
dusts off his hands—clean—
And makes to walk down
smooth marble steps because
The Spider is locked
away—
he compliments himself for
a job well done when the body—is still—devoid
of Air, a husk of
brother, son, father, toppled sideways
like wheat.

Justice goes to bed with
his hands cold
over his heart—
he has failed, and Justice does not know
what it is like
to fail.

About 
Sheerea Yu
Sheerea is a junior at University School of Nashville, and is most interested in exploring secret voices, unfamiliar voices, forgotten voices. She writes to perhaps put on a page what would otherwise be lost. Searching for her own voice and using it to amplify others’ voices is deeply important to her, because in this world so many are silenced.
OZ Arts Nashville presents Art Wire: an ongoing collaboration between OZ Arts and The Porch in which 10 writers attend the OZ Arts performance season and respond to the presentations through original writing that is personal, playful, and deeply engaged. The OZ Arts 2019-2020 season offers each Art Wire Fellow a diverse array of inspiration, including innovative Japanese dance artist Hiroaki Umeda; a genre-bending presentation of Frankenstein by Chicago-based company Manual Cinema; and two emotionally raw works with Nashville's own professional dance company, New Dialect, just to name a few.

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