"Fugitive Spirits" by Gail Tyson (Reprise)
– I crossed the threshold, feeling summoned.
The souls of those Irish who perished here seeped from the shadows.
The luck of the Irish brought Gail Tyson to Knoxville, Tennessee, in fall 2021, where she belongs to the Knoxville Writers Guild and the Pre-Pulitzer Critique Group. In 2020 Shanti Arts published her chapbook, The Vermeer Tales. Current and upcoming work appears in Rockvale Review, Still: the Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Gail serves as president of the board of Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre, where she paints sets and avoids giving curtain talks.
Gail Tyson
Author’s Talk
Travel and art inspire much of my writing, and compressed forms like flash challenge me. All three came together in “Fugitive Spirits.” It, like most of my work, concerns displacement and vulnerability—states of being that spark my imagination. This was true in September 2016, when I fled the divisive rhetoric of the U.S. presidential election to visit the land of my ancestors.
Image by Gail Tyson
One day during that visit, I wandered by the Catholic cathedral in Galway, never expecting to be drawn in by its beauty and history. Yet the building cast a spell from my first encounter with the bas-relief sculptures by Imogen Stuart on the west doors. The awe I experienced once I crossed the threshold arose again that evening, when I read how the Church erected the cathedral on the former site of the City Jail. That awe reinforced the empathy my body felt, during my time inside the place of worship, for the fugitives once jailed on the spot.
This story has evolved over several years, distilled from a longer piece on “soul places” and expanded by my personal grief when my husband died after an unexpected, brief illness. What we don’t expect, I’ve found, can bring us to our knees—one way or another. Encounters like these, if we’re open to them, can lead us to reverence, compassion, and a sense of belonging. - Gail Tyson
