Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You Review of If Instead of Apes We Had Come from Grapes Review of Anson County Review of Dissolution of Ghosts Crossword (Solution Posted in July. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) Mar/Apr Crossword Solution Creative Nonfiction 1998 By Samuel Hazo Booing the Pope By Matthew D. Taylor Sgt. Robert Starbuck, USMC: Elegy and Essay By John Guthrie Shrink Wrap, Diet Cokes and a Kazoo By Sara J. Ford Poetry And the Time Is By Samuel Hazo In His Winter By Wanda D. Campbell Lester By Thomas Reynolds Generation Gap By Valerie Lauria Stanske Two Poets By Gary C. Wilkens Mongolia, 1930 By Gary C. Wilkens Fiction A Death in the Family By John Speeking Letters By Suzanne Abbot Among the Briars By Pat Tompkins Filling in the Angles By Jessica DelBalzo Miss Mary By Beth L. Block Cover Art Photography by Seth Brown About the Contributors © 2006, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Bill Mausteller Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Sen. Fiction Editor - Patti Kurtz Sen. Poetry Editor - Neeldhara Misra Sen. Creative Nonfiction Editor - Brenda Coxe Contributing Editor - Robert Dittman Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/submission.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/volunteer.html. |
Filling in the Angles By Jessica Del Balzo Phil- And I’d love to say that getting the mirror knocked off my car (in the way it happened and when and where I was on my way to at the time etc. etc.) last March was/is a symbol (I was on my way to get a haircut when someone opened their door into my car as I was passing, if you must know, though I doubt it’s been eating at your soul). But Honey Pie, you can make anything into a symbol. For a while I had some things to say about the dishonesty of metaphors, but I changed my mind. Sometimes they’re almost too honest, especially the angular ones. In all honesty, I haven’t got a whole lot to say, especially to you. I haven’t been at the theorizing much lately, more just hanging out and observing, enjoying this comfort zone while I’m still in it. But you know me, pen in hand like always. I like change, but I secretly hope I never learn to keep my hands still. I hope you never learn to either, though I doubt you will. This may sound strange, but lately I’ve found myself going back over some of the things you wrote me that I’ve held onto. I can tell you this much, it’s obvious, man, you’ve got “it.” It’s in you. And it doesn’t even matter where it came from. Sometimes it’s those gifts we never expected that affect us the most, even after any necessary payments or repair work after a collision, however small. - Dana P.S.- Thank you and goodnight Dana- You're welcome. Nothing quite so romantic as a damaged mirror… This is probably going to seem really random, but do you still have your nose pierced, by the way? I think the last time I saw you (a few months ago, was it?) you were frustrated with it. - Phil Dear Phil, Funny you should ask. I actually got the stud taken out of my nose the other day. It wasn’t really spur-of-the-moment, more spur-of-the-week, and it’s not like it was really infected either. It just…it would have left permanent damage if I’d kept it in much longer. It just felt like it was time to get rid of it. I had thought I’d be more torn up about it than I actually was, but it was surprisingly easy to let go. I just called the dermatologist and showed up the next day. She uncoiled the little fucker and that was that. She was pretty cool about it too, not excessively condescending. “Just no more piercings,” she said, “and no tattoos.” The woman behind the reception desk, however, was an absolute asshole! She was openly laughing at me. “I wish my daughter were here to see THIS! She wants to get her belly button pierced!” I sort of smiled. “Do you regret it?” she asked, leaning towards me, eager. “Nope.” And I meant it too. But then she laughed some more. She had this annoying (menopausal?) chuckle. But it was a spirited chuckle, regardless of the state of her reproductive system. I should have had a little fun with it. You know, been like, “You think this looks bad? You should have seen what happened to my clit!” It’s been awhile. What have you been doing with yourself? - Dana Dana- Don’t you feel so much better , now that it’s gone? I know that I definitely felt better after I got rid of my nose ring. Or stud. Whatever you call it. Jewelry. Nose jewelry. But it was like, as soon as I took it out, Ahhhhh. *sighs* One thing I’m glad I haven’t gotten is a tattoo. But my friend Jim, man, he called me the other day, all worked up. “Dude, you can’t tell anybody!” “Okay.” “So I went on vacation to Amsterdam and…” (As soon as he said “Amsterdam,” I knew this was going to be a fabulous story) “Yeah, so I was in Amsterdam, and, well, I was with these people, and…okay, before I tell you this, just understand, like, I’d been drunk for three days straight. I swear to God. Three days!” “Three days.” “Three days. But yeah, so, I met this girl, and we went camping.” “Camping?” “Camping. We went camping, and, man, she was-she was so cool, man. She had this crazy hair and one of those- well anyway, she goes to me, she’s like, ‘I like your tattoo.’ I was like, ‘My what?’ and she said, ‘Your tattoo.’” “You have a tattoo?” “Dude, you can’t tell anybody this, but…” “What?” “I have a huge tattoo of an elephant! On my ass!” I don’t think I said anything for, like, 5 minutes. I was hysterical. Finally I said, “Where did it come from?” “I don’t know! I mean, it’s cool and all, it’s this African design, really neat, but it’s an elephant, and it’s on my ass!” “On your ass?” “Yeah! On my ass!” Ah, poor Jim. I actually saw the elephant when he came back. It’s a cool tattoo, but, yeah, it’s huge, and it is on his ass. What have I been doing with myself? Not much of anything in particular aside from the usual art/music madness. Just getting things in order, I guess, but for what, I’m not sure. Just getting things in order. With love, Phil P.S.- You don’t actually have your clitoris pierced, do you? I really hope not. That’ll mess with your chakras really badly. P.P.S.- Oh wait, no, of course you don’t… Phil- Hah, you. Of course you’d say it that way. Very creative, as always. This being in reference to the P.P.S., of course. What is there to say, aside from the fact that it was a long time ago? Well I don’t know about you, but I consider three-and-a-half months a long time. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a long time, but it feels like it. When we first started “talking,” writing those letters to “no one” back in December, it didn’t really feel like it would go any further than that. I mean, we hadn’t seen each other in person since you’d graduated. But it did go further, and we did, I guess I was just surprised, first that you came around at all, and then when you disappeared. Oh dear, I hate when I say stuff like that. It makes me feel so “high school.” I guess that’s fitting since I am still in high school, even if only for another month, but I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. It’s not that it’s so terrible, but I just feel that there’s all this great stuff out there I’m being held back from. In time, I suppose. It is always about time, isn’t it? I’ve just been riding out these last weeks of high school with the least amount of complication possible. Or trying to. Good luck, right? Seriously, though, there are a lot of things I am not going to miss. For example, all anyone ever seems to talk about is the fucking prom. Oh excuse me, not the prom. Just “prom.” Was it that bad when you were a senior? I assume it was, being that was only two years ago. Well hey, cheers to never seeing half these people again (unless we want to, of course). I’ve enclosed a copy of Elvis Costello’s Blood And Chocolate, last spring’s elixir. I think it came out in 1988 or something, right after his divorce. It’s fabulously bitter and intense, the perfect substitute for actual blood or chocolate. If you listen closely, there are some kick-ass double entendres in some of the songs. Oh man, yeah. One thing I’ve noticed though, is that this album definitely grows on you. I love it, but I remember that only some of it clicked the first time. - Dana P.S.- If there’s one thing I’ve learned in high school, it is how to fake “just like a woman.” *nods to Bob Dylan and winks at you* To Dana: Ooh! That was cold, love! I’m with you on the prom thing. It was a nightmare. I went, but I didn’t stay very long because it was such a joke. There’s definitely something about 18-year-old guys in tuxedos that seems so…unnatural. And uncomfortable. That cold feeling of the fabric, the strange weight. They’ve dressed us like adults, damnit! Some people like feeling all slick like that, but I really don’t. I’ve tried on occasion, but I’m sure it hasn’t worked. You could probably tell me. Then again maybe not. I think that one time you came over and I made you dinner, you were more drunk than you realized. You should have eaten more, love. I’m sorry, and I mean, I can tell maybe you’re past this sort of, but I’ll admit that I remember it- our hands in each other’s hair. Part of me thinks maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but by the same token… I have a set of stock images of you in my mind, and I find this one particular image really fucking hard to shake. In this one you’re lying on your side facing me as I stand in the doorway with a bottle of wine in my one hand and a burning stick of incense in the other. And you’re just starting to feel drunk but you’re trying to act like you’re not, and you’re just staring with your eyes and smile tilting. I’ve tried a million times to recapture it so I could show you— you staring at me through the smoke with the lights lowered. I’ve tried to paint it about a million times but there is always something missing. It was like you were leaving your own body, or something in you was, like part of you was separating. I swear, there was this shadow. I think that maybe that was why things happened the way that they did. When you started to realize what you were doing. What we were doing. I noticed it in your eyes, the way they were still moving but not so fast. I felt it too, but it would have been so complicated. I won’t tell you what I whispered into the hollow of your neck because, yes, it was a long time ago and all, but I meant it when I said it. But see, there were just so many angles to approach it from. I mean, where to start? And where to end? And you know how I feel about time, in general. Sometimes the best way is to just leave things open instead of trying to close them neatly. How can you put everything in a box? I’d think you’d know as well as anyone that that just never works. Love, Phil Dear Phil, I heard someone say today, “What are you doing- waiting for a postcard? Move!” and I took it to be a sort of personal attack. But then I realized they were just telling a story about a gym teacher screaming at them in fourth grade or something. Still, something about it got stuck in my head. It kind of made me want to start running. God, I’m just, like, ready to get on with it. Well, to get on with several things. I’m sure you remember the feeling. Some people are getting really nostalgic about high school ending, but I’m constantly fighting that urge to be like, “Why does any of this matter?” In a way, I wish I felt like them, but there doesn’t seem to be all that much here for me. I just feel kind of out of the loop. But it’s not that I wish that I were a part of it either, exactly. And yeah, I’ll admit that there is still that side of me that sort of wishes I’d get a phone call from someone I sometimes fall to remembering a little too often for my own good. Shhh! I’m trying to keep you anonymous! “You wear the red carnation and I’ll wear the fedora. Meet me by the bridge.” For someone who’s only eighteen, I feel like I’ve already had enough meetings in diners, coffee shops, and restaurants to lose track of how many there have been. Enough to have forgotten a lot of the meetings, the details. Enough to have blurred the memories of a few faces. Do most people do it like this? All this meeting, catching up, erasing one person with the hands of another? Closing someone’s eyes by opening up somebody else’s? Oddly, though, you were the last. Not the last ever, I’m sure, but it was like after you went away, this switch went off in me. I sort of understood that I needed to just stop for a spell, look around, learn to spend some time with myself instead of trying to reach in a bunch of directions at once. It wasn’t exactly a conscious, thought, exactly, but things changed. After you let me out that night, I didn’t go right to my car. but instead stared at the walkway a second. A light, wet snow was falling. The flakes were hitting the cement and melting right away, and I started thinking of this zen saying I saw on a calendar in my English teacher’s classroom. Be melting snow. Cleanse yourself of yourself. I wasn’t so sure how at the time, but something about it made sense to me. As I drove home, head cloudy, I knew that something very important was just beginning, weird as that might sound (it was easy for me to discount it at the time, given I was a bit drunk still), and that maybe it was going to be hurt a bit, but that eventually I would come out on the other side of it. A much better side. And now it’s June, and I feel like I am close to something, though I couldn’t tell you what, exactly. I am feeling pretty good today, overall, but something in me is sad, something in my legs, or maybe in my hands. Or maybe it’s something in my eyes. I made a list once of things to learn how to make. You know, essentials for entertaining. The type of entertaining that may or may not have to do with “serious male company.” With the blank time I have ahead of me this weekend, I could go about crossing some things off, educate myself. But I know where this could leave me, and where I will find myself- standing in the supermarket talking to the limes again. There is no one to make margaritas for, but I am learning anyway. Love, Dana Dear Dana, You told me once that I was like a satellite, sending images back to you. I wish I’d been able to tell you earlier that that’s the only way I’ve ever known how to reach people. And even then, I feel like I can hardly reach anyone. You’re the type of girl who lies with all your channels open and who doesn’t really close her eyes while she sleeps. Nothing seems to surprise you except the expected. No wonder you get so tired sometimes. After a certain hour your voice changes and your eyes start swimming (naked). You couldn’t be insincere even if you tried then. And it’s in the way you kiss too. But that’s the side of you I’m used to. Or was used to. The sound of your voice in daylight came as a shock when I called you last week. It wasn’t a bad shock- I was glad to hear you sounding well-rested for a change- but it was still a shock. It was like I finally realized just how far I had been sending signals, but it also showed me how close far away really is. I’ve seen you, you know. I was in town for my mom’s birthday, and I saw you drive past the other day, all your windows down and your hair flying. For whatever it’s worth now, did I ever tell you I thought you were beautiful? I meant to, I really did, but I just always got so caught up in the moment. But you know how that goes, when it just gets to be too late. Not that it’s ever the right time. But then again, it’s always the right time… Isn’t there a commercial like that? McDonald’s? KFC? I hate fast food. Beats the hell out of me. Anyway, I’m not sure what it was, but you seemed more settled, less fragmented. You looked like someone had filled you in. But it wasn’t me that did it. But I think you know that already. It was nice of you to thank me for the “indirect help,” but honestly, you don’t owe me anything. Not a thing. Underneath everything though, I really am sorry. I’m not even a hundred percent sure exactly what about. About disappearing on you, yes. Like you were saying about taking a breather and looking around, I think that’s what I needed to do. All of a sudden, I was feeling all this crazy stuff and I just couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know what else to do except get away for a while, get some perspective. You and I were and are in such different places. But even if there’s no name for it, I’m sure you know what I mean. You’re like that. It’s interesting how people communicate. I mean, a long time ago, there weren’t any phones or computers. Just letters, and this possible psychic thing. But what about satellites, Dana? Sometimes what I think we were doing was testing to see if they worked. See just how far we could reach. At exactly which angle a metaphor or a line should be tilted so that it would hit just the right location. You’re a natural, I’ll give you that. Better than you think you are. You don’t know the half of it. But I think you’ve at least got a better idea now. At least I hope you do. I really do. Really. I HAVE AN IDEA! How’s this? Pick a cloud, any cloud, and we’ll meet there one day. I promise. Love Always, Phil P.S. Next time I’m in town, I’ll give you a ring. |