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 For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.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 VolunteerMatch.

Knit Two Together By Jo L. Gerrard When Carolyn was sixteen she had a fight with her mother Beverly, who was thirty-four. Beverly coldly walked to Carolyn’s bedroom in the small house Beverly’s parents had built for her on their property, packed all Carolyn’s things into a single, yellow, suitcase, deposited both suitcase and daughter on the front step, and told Carolyn that if she was so unhappy in Beverly’s house she could just find somewhere else to live. This was not an idle threat, and yet Carolyn could have gone up to her grandparents’ house and been taken in with welcoming arms. Even knowing this, Carolyn stood on the outside of the door and pled with Beverly, who was standing on the inside, until Beverly relented and let her back in the house. It was not uncommon for women in Evanston, Wyoming, in the early 20th century to have to or to choose to sew their own clothing or knit their own socks and anyone who has survived a prairie winter will know how important blankets can be. Beverly and her mother were no exceptions to this. When Carolyn started to learn the skills of knitting, crocheting, and sewing, however, Beverly regularly denigrated her efforts, tearing out rows of a sweater or blanket because the stitches were uneven, or taking apart a seam in a dress so that Carolyn had to do it again, properly. Beverly would do this again and again until Carolyn would cry in frustration and hurt, because Carolyn couldn’t perform the task to Beverly’s perfectionist standards. Even after Carolyn married and became a mother herself, this did not change. While Carolyn was pregnant, she started to knit an afghan for the child-to-come. Because she did not meet Beverly’s standards of progress, Beverly took the half-finished afghan away from Carolyn and completed it. The common thread between these women is family; they are my mother Carolyn, my grandmother Beverly, and my great-grandmother Undine. I cannot speak to the relationship between Beverly and Undine, because what I know of my great-grandmother I know only through stories other people have told me. I do know that she knit, and that she crocheted. I have a blue, green, and purple afghan that Undine knit for me before I was born, and repaired for me when I was in my teens. I have another afghan in white and gold, crocheted by my father’s mother, Edda; though I know even less of her than I do of Undine. Edda passed away the year I would turn thirty, not that long after my father had a non-fatal heart attack, and it was on the winter afternoon that she died that I found myself laying the two afghans next to each other on my bed, and wishing that I had one from my mother to complete the set. It struck me that the skills needed to make such afghans were going to die out in my family with my mother. If I had asked Mom to make me an afghan, she would have demurred, saying she didn’t have the patience for such crafts. And yet, I could remember her working on a lovely full-sized crewel (needlepoint) still-life when my sister and I were young. She knew how to bake bread from scratch, and how to make a God’s Eye out of yarn and two popsicle sticks. She knew how to sew, because she had sewn Halloween costumes for my sister and me, and had sewn dresses for us. I do not remember, though I have been told about, the knit bikini that she made for me to wear to “Mommy and Me” swim classes. It was knit out of cotton, and had stretched so much by the end of the one-hour swimming lesson that I am told it could have fit my mother. I knew she owned both knitting needles and crochet hooks, having seen them in “her” drawer in the chest she and my father shared. We children were not supposed to get in the drawer, so of course I have vivid memories of opening it when she wasn’t there, breathing in the scent of cedar and looking through the mysterious objects inside: swatches of lime and white cloth, her tomato-shaped pincushion, her kit with its collection of sewing machine feet and thread. I assumed that these tools for creativity were given to her by my grandmother, and for the most part I was right. I would still like to have an afghan knit by my mother, but that winter afternoon I knew not to ask. Instead, when she asked what I would like for my thirtieth birthday I said I would like to learn how to knit. I did not explain my reasons, although I know she was surprised by the request, and I probably should have been more specific about my request. What I wanted – what I imagined – was to sit down with my mother on the dog-hairy green couch in their living room and for her to guide my hands in the motions of knitting, as I was sure Beverly had done with her, and Undine with Beverly. But I did not say “I want you to teach me to knit.” I’m not sure she would have, anyway. It wasn’t until much later, her hands lovingly petting a shawl I had knit for her out of soft alpaca, that Mom quietly told me, “I was afraid to teach you girls to sew or to knit. I was afraid to help you with your homework. Your grandmother made me cry and I didn’t want to do that to you. I didn’t want you to hate me.” But that revelation came long after my thirtieth birthday, when instead of the imagined lesson I received two booklets (Teach Yourself to Knit and Teach Yourself to Crochet), half a garbage bag of acrylic yarn we had inherited from Edda (my sister got the other half), and two sets of knitting needles and a handful of crochet hooks that Beverly had given to Carolyn. They still smelled faintly of the cedar of her drawer. Mom told me to read through the books and to let her know if I was having trouble understanding anything in them. She also promised she would help if I came to her with any questions. Mother-daughter relationships are fraught with pitfalls and holes that neither mother nor daughter knows are there. I certainly didn’t know how closely I was treading to my mother’s fear of becoming like her mother and destroying my interest in the craft of knitting. Despite the fact that I was her adult child, I’m sure in her mind I was still the difficult if loving three-year-old who sat down across the table from her at a restaurant, folded her hands beneath her chin, and said, “Now. Talk to me, Mommy.” I didn’t know that she was afraid to cause me pain because I had expressed an interest in learning. I just knew that I was being left to fumble through on my own. I still remember my first time. I cast on, carefully following the steps as listed in Teach Yourself to Knit. Making a slip knot in the yarn and looping it around the needle was fine. Easy, even. And the next step wasn’t completely awkward. I had to put the second needle through the loop around the first needle created by the slip knot. Where things got complicated was in wrapping the yarn around the second needle. I felt like I needed three, maybe four hands to perform this simple task! The new loop kept falling off, or being pushed off by the old loop. And then to pass the new loop – once successfully on my second needle – back to the first needle was another challenge. After half an hour’s struggle, I finally had ten “cast on” stitches on my needle, and was ready to begin my first real row of knitting. What an accomplishment! The knit stitch itself, being very similar to the cast on method the book had shown me, was fairly simple to master. The acrylic yarn wanted to slide off the tip of the casein needles, though, and so I pulled each stitch as taut as I could, ignoring the coarse bite where the yarn slid over the top joint of my right index finger (a place that, today, has become calloused). Another hour, and ten rows of ten knit stitches each later, and I thought I might be ready to try to master the purl stitch. It was undoubtedly a hazy summer day in Southern California, and I was curled up in one corner of the couch in the living room. I was sweating, although I couldn’t say now whether that was because of the muggy late-June heat or from the intensity of my attention on the two sticks in my hands and the yarn between them. While I was following the instructions in the book that showed me how to purl I broke the tip off the needle. In the process of snapping the tip, the stitch that I had been working with fell off the needle: I “dropped a stitch,” in knitting parlance. It was the last straw. I pulled the loops off the needle and began to unravel the swatch. I was almost ready to declare knitting yet another fine motor skill I couldn’t master. Mom came back into the room at that point. Seeing the look on my face and the vehemence with which I was pulling apart the knitting, she asked what I was doing. I showed her the needle tip folded into my closed fist, feeling guilty because it was something of hers – something she had given to me – which I had broken. Adult child or not, I was afraid of her anger. She took the tip from me and set it aside and held out her hand for my knitting. I handed it to her. She finished returning cloth to string, and asked me to start over again so she could see what the book had me doing. I cast on again, three or four stitches, and she offered to show me an easier way to get started. I handed her the needles and yarn, and she tried to show me her method. I took it back, and tried to mimic her movements, but ended up going back to the way the book had shown me. Even though she had knit nothing since before I was born, the yarn seemed to flow around her hands. She waved the needles like wands and stitches appeared on them, one after the other. When I took the swatch back from her and tried again, the yarn turned to knots in my hands. Not the kind I was trying to create, either. Still, I persisted; and persisted. Eventually I found I was knitting. Maybe not with ease, but by the end of July I had started my first afghan. I did not ask my mother for additional help until I dropped stitches again; she taught me to pick them back up without tears on either of our parts. I now have three afghans to warm my bed on chilly winter evenings, one made by my own hand. My mother, father, and sister also own afghans that I knit for them. Just the act of knitting is comfortable; I am confident enough now that my hands can continue to knit away while I hold a conversation with someone else. It was while I was knitting a last-minute Christmas present that I saw the heavy knot that exists between Beverly and Carolyn for me. Carolyn has decided to turn old t-shirts belonging to my sister and me into keepsake quilts for the two of us. Beverly found the first one she had begun, and – without Carolyn’s permission – had begun to tear out Carolyn’s careful seams, muttering about their sloppiness, shooting Carolyn dark looks, and I’m pretty sure I heard her say, “Didn’t I teach you better than this?” Carolyn bore the unraveling of her handiwork as best she could, but finally told Beverly, “Don’t be mean to me.” This was the only time I have seen my mother stand up to her mother. It is hard for Carolyn to say anything against Beverly without feeling like a “disloyal daughter,” and I understand, because I feel the same way when I say something negative about her. It is another stitch in the long, complex and difficult relationship between mothers and daughters in our family, and one that I am not sure I could – or would – ever unravel.