Table of Contents


Views and Mechanics
Publisher's Note
Editor's Note
Review of African Psycho
Review of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Film Review of "Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind"
Writing Contest Results
Creative Nonfiction
Back Pain...Who Cares?
By Michael D. Burg
Knit Two Together
By Jo L. Gerrard
Skin Odyssey
By Holly Leigh Jacobson
Leaves in the Wind
By Molly Molloy
Hydroglyphics
By Phaedra Greenwood
Poetry
Indiana Poem
By Michael Lee Johnson
Inspire Me, Ms. Muse
By Tony Zurlo
A Poem Forgot
By Gabrielle Rabinowitz
Yours
By Sheila McLaughlin Sikorski
Confetti
By Alan Girling
Correction:
Drive Me Home Again
By Anne Cammon
Fiction
Scaffold
By Joseph Bathanti
For the Taking
By Anne Leigh Parrish
The Artistic Impulse
By Johanna Lipford
Justifiable Brew Aside
By Barbara Anton
Stopping at the DQ
By Susan White
Cover Art
Bright Red
By Dee Rimbaud
About the Contributors

© 2007, 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 - Vacant
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
Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz
Senior Editor - Neeldhara Misra
Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs
Blog Contributing Editor - Maggie Koster
Education Blog Contributing Editor - Jordan Wirfs-Brock
Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross

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River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch.

Contributors' Bios

Michael D. Burg - Michael D. Burg is an academic emergency physician. In his copious spare time he's pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction.

Jo L. Gerrard - Jo L. Gerrard has previously worked as an Editorial Board member for the Harrow webzine. She has had poetry published in the Harrow, Astropoetica, and the California Lutheran University Morning Glory literary magazine. Her website is http://www.sistercoyote.com/.

Holly Leigh Jacobson

Molly Molloy

Phaedra Greenwood

Michael Lee Johnson - Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL. after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is interested in social, religious topics, and the need for universal health care in the United States. He is presently self-employed, with a previous background in social service areas. He has a B.A. degree in sociology, worked on a Masters Program in Correctional Administration. Recent published poems: The Orange Room Review; Bolts Of Silk; The Flask Review; Apollo’s Lyre; Chantarelle’s Notebook; Fresh! On Line Literary Magazine. Mr. Johnson has several poems pending publication March through July, 2007.

Tony Zurlo - Tony taught in Nigeria with the Peace Corps in his careless youth. His quest to repel middle age routed him through China. There his students convinced him he'd accumulated too much negative karma in his previous life as a corrupt Qing Dynasty official. So his punishment was reincarnation as an American trapped in Texas. To conceal from editors his age, gender, size, race, religion, politics, and other private predispositions, Tony survives folded up in a back room in Arlington, Texas, working on Alice in Cyberland, his anxiously-awaited history about 21st century American foreign policy.

Gabrielle Rabinowitz - Gabrielle Rabinowitz is currently a Senior at The Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology in New Jersey. Passions include biology research, reading, and writing. Gabrielle has completed a 391 page fantasy novel (which is currently searching for a publisher).

Sheila McLaughlin Sikorski - Sheila McLaughlin Sikorski is a student in the Master's in Writing Program at Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ. Her works has appeared in poetsagainstthewar.org and voicesinwartime.org as well as a self-published chapbook titled "How Dare I? Or Poetry That Would Get Me Thrown Out of Most Anywhere." Sheila also worked as a journalist for almost 20 years.

Alan Girling - Alan Girling lives with his family in Richmond, BC, where he works as teacher of academic English and writes prose and poetry in his spare time. His writings have appeared in such venues as Lichen Arts and Letters Preview, Hobart, The MacGuffin, Southern Ocean Review, The Menda City Review, Snow Monkey and Smokelong Quarterly.

Anne Cammon - Anne Cammon is a poet and fiction writer who was educated at Barnard College. She curates a literary radio show for WKCR FM New York, featuring contemporary works of poetry, fiction, new music and radio drama. Her work has recently appeared in the Bloomsbury edition of Riverbabble and Rumble Magazine.

Joseph Bathanti - Joseph Bathanti is a professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. "Scaffold" is to be published in a collection entitled The High Heart - winner of the 2006 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction and slated for fall 2007 publication by Eastern Washington University Press.

Anne Leigh Parrish - Anne Leigh Parrish's short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Virginia Quarterly Review, New Century Voices, Clackamas Literary Review (winning the Willamette Award in Fiction), Carve Magazine, Fiction Warehouse, Small Voices, Big Confessions (an anthology of short fiction from Edit Red Books), Amarillo Bay, and elsewhere. She was a Finalist in So To Speak's 2007 Fiction Contest, both the 2006 and 2005 Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, and Meridian's 2004 Editors' Prize. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two children, and teaches creative writing at the Richard Hugo House, Seattle's center for literary arts.

Johanna Lipford

Barbara Anton

Susan White

Dee Rimbaud - Dee Rimbaud is an artist, poet, novelist and occasional new age gypsy. He is currently living in Isla Cristina, in the south of Spain, with his partner and child, after four months of travelling about in a Mercedes 609d van. He is author of two poetry collections, The Bad Seed (Stride, 1998) and Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels (Bluechrome, 2004); and one novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God (Bluechrome, 2004). He edited the charity poetry anthology, The Book Of Hopes And Dreams (Bluechrome, 2006). He also edits The AA Independent Press Guide, a free online directory of magazines and publishers, hosted on his website alongside a host of useful writers' resources, as well as a portfolio of his art and a selection of his writing. His art is frequently used in magazines and internet zines and has graced the book jackets of collections by Janet Buck, Rupert Loydell, Norman Jope and many others. Dee's art is now available on t-shirts, posters, cards and assorted gift items via his CafePress shop.