A reprint of my story "Some Tigers - A Story in Two Parts" has just been published by the online journal Psychopomp. https://psychopompmag.com/digital-reprint-issues/some-tigers/
The piece was originally published in the 2014 issue of Gold Man Review, who kindly nominated it for a Pushcart Prize. To order a copy of this issue, which also includes work by Judith Arcana, Paulann Petersen and Penelope Schott, click http://www.goldmanpublishing.com/. Many thanks to the editors of both Gold Man and Psychopomp.
Psychopomp. Now there's a name that grabs your attention. Taken from a Greek word, a psychopomp is a creature that guides spirits to the next life, which makes me think of the women who participated in my most recent creative writing class. Not because they were scary, but because each one of them so skillfully transported the rest of us to other worlds.
This was a particularly cold, wet Portland winter, but thanks to these talented writers, everyone in our group got to imagine what it's like to take a kayak out on soothing waters or to play on an attic floor with an array of paper dolls or to walk on the sunbaked bricks of a distant city.
Listening to my students read their work reminded me of how important it is to keep trying to hear what other people have to say, even (or especially) if their experience is radically different from my own. Maybe in those moments when we stop and listen we start to move closer to understanding and empathy. And maybe those are two traits that help distinguish humans from other animals.
