Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Lions at Lamb House Review of Jamestown Review of The Children of Húrin Review of The Politics of Life Film Review of "300" Creative Nonfiction Home By Marion Agnew One Foot and Then the Other By Greg Coykendall Poetry Hannah Plays with Light By Kristine Ong Muslim Caricature of an Early Planter By Michael Lee Johnson Comes a Push-Cart Down a Long-Ass Ghazal By Levon DeBranch Modern Day Moses By Bob Boston Squares (2) Plaza De Armas, Santiago, Chile By Graham Burchell Fiction The Larchmont Campaign By Zain Deane Body Warmth By Louise Kantro The Good People Up North By T.M. Spooner Triple Word Score By Patricia C. Meringer Texans Abroad By Franklin Strong Hunting for Manhood By Jason Sizemore Staten Island Zen By Michael Enright 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 - Kenneth Weiss, Ed.D 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.

Staten Island Zen By Michael Enright My first night at a sesshin. Zen meditation on Staten Island. If that’s not Zen, then what is? Not sure what to expect. The flyer in the Korean fruit store only gave the beginning time and location. Wonder how long it’ll be. Doubt if I can go past twenty minutes without losing it. And if I have to do the lotus position bullshit, I’ll probably just leave. My knees would never last. The Mets clinched the division last night. Took them long enough. Last time was 1988. My boy Jack was three months old back then. I was a new attorney. Working for that miserable law firm on Wall Street. Eighteen hour days, six and a half day weeks. Drank Dewar’s in styrofoam coffee cups after the partners left. Waited at the Blarney Stone for the black cab to take me home. Pounded shots of Jamison’s and mugs of flat beer. A couple of Bud tall boys for the ride home. Can’t talk to the driver. Might say something stupid. Things get back. Home by two, a nightcap and into bed for a few hours before it started all over again. In a death spiral that lasted eight and a half years until the brass ring slipped out of my hand when the firm’s fattest partner, the one with all the clients I serviced, who happened to be my biggest supporter, gathered up his clients’ files in the early morning hours before the partnership meeting that was to decide my fate and left me behind. Hey, what can you do? Besides stabbing the douche bag in the heart in the dark recesses of the alley where he parked behind his favorite titty bar, the one in Long Island City. That was fun. A little cloak and dagger to liven up an otherwise sullen night. I took his wallet to make it look like a robbery and turned it into ash before bagging it for the sanitation workers to take it away. As careful as I was, I spent months waiting for them to come and get me. Months in which douche bag tormented my nights. Every time I dozed off, he rose from the grave and chased me through my nightmares. And every time the phone rang, my heart stopped. I had to double up on the Xanax to get through the interviews with the police. They looked at me. But they also looked at the 27 partners he screwed. The hordes of opposing counsel he had infuriated over the years. The ex-wives. The husbands of the secretaries he had fucked during his illustrious career. And in the end they chalked it up to just another robbery gone bad. The firm got most of his clients back, but I was tainted by my association with the dead traitor. My services were no longer needed. So I moved on. To an even worse job in L.A. – as far away from the NYPD as I could get. An in-house counsel position reporting to an anorexic demonic boss. She started a week before me as head of the new litigation group. The General Counsel foisted me on her as her second in charge. She reminded me of that every hour of every horrific day I worked for her. If I told a client yes, she made me call him back from her office to say no. If I reached a settlement with an employee’s attorney, she’d have me break it. If she wanted me to cover a meeting, she’d tell me with seconds to spare so I could not prepare. I got shit for covering her pro bono work on company time. I got crapped on for taking a call from someone higher up in the firm’s food chain without consulting her. The only good thing about the job was that douche bag returned to his grave for good. I had bigger and better things to torment me. So after two years of unrelenting shit, I hit her with a car. It is very satisfying to kill someone you hate. Professor Abrams never covered that in the criminal procedure class at Fordham Law School. And each time you kill, it gets a little easier to do it again. I kept the car windows open so I could hear her scream, but she didn’t utter a peep. Yet, I can still hear the crunch and thud when I hit her with the car, see her skull face hitting the windshield, her skeleton body thumping over the roof of the car and sailing into the air before collapsing onto the pavement with a wonderful bone-breaking thunk. Joy. People tut-tutted about the hit and run, but they were all happy to see her dead. I could tell. And once again, I sweated out the next few months waiting for them to come and get me. Surely I couldn’t get away with two murders? In the age of instantaneous communications, the LAPD would soon learn from the NYPD about the demise of my former boss and attach their teeth to my ass in a death grip. Or not. This time, no one even talked to me. Except for the bitch I killed who festered in my brain like a cancer that no amount of scotch and Xanax could dislodge. But despite my contribution and the price I paid for it, her job went to an outsider. Fucked again. So I gave up law for good, moved back home to Staten Island and started my very own Internet porno site. And that one begat another which begat another and so on. I found my niche in the stinky groin of the web. No kiddy stuff. Not even hot teen stuff. I personally verified the age of every performer on my sites. And when I looked up nine years later, I was divorced, living in a colossal Mac Mansion perched on Lighthouse Hill, driving a Bentley, vacationing in St. Bart’s and still suicidally depressed despite all the pussy, pills and therapists. Then, I picked up a book on Buddhism in the local Barnes & Noble and wham. Hit me right between the ears. Like the big B was talking to me. I kept on reading and then I saw the sign in the fruit store. But that’s my mind running in circles. I can’t make it stop. Is it meditation if your monkey mind is hurling itself through the treetops? Yes, if you bring it back to the breath every time you catch it in flight. That’s what I’ve read anyway. But I can’t seem to get very far at home. Too many distractions what with the live action being web-cast from the studio in my basement and the mental replays of the night of the bouncing boss. So here I am. I pull my Bentley Continental into the Franciscan monastery on Todt Hill. Death Hill. It’s dark now. Kind of a coincidence the sesshin is here. I went away to a Franciscan prep-seminary for high school. I was going to be a priest. Puberty, atheism and a gropey priest did me in. Lots of parking spots available. Good. When you pay six figures for a car, you prefer as much room as possible between yours and the next one, which in this case is a beat up, black Ford Taurus wagon. That brings back fond memories. It was the make, model and color of the car I used that night, the one I stole from a local mall parking lot a few hours earlier, the one I sold to a car-crushing scrap yard in Oakland the next day to make it disappear for good. It was ten years ago tonight, come to think of it. Tonight is a night of coincidences. What if I’m the only one here? Besides the Roshi. Just me and Roshi. How uncomfortable would that be? I’d kill for a cold beer. Been dry for a year now. But not a day goes by I don’t think about it. I can still taste the first sip of the day. Hope I don’t nod off. Can’t seem to sleep any more. I get through the day with heaping helpings of Red Bull and Snickers bars. Thank god, six others are already in the tiny airless room in the basement. Three men, three women. None younger than thirty. Most gray. They sit on zafu pillows, the round thick ones, placed on cushions on the linoleum floor. Two kneel with their asses on and legs under a wooden contraption. Is that as uncomfortable as it looks, I say to an older man on the mini-bench. No. Not at all, he says. Would you like to try it? Nah. Thanks. Okay if I sit in that chair? Sit wherever you feel comfortable. * * * Who’s running the show? What was the name on the flyer? Roshi Maurice? What the hell kind of name is that for a Zen priest. What am I doing here? A skinny guy in need of a shave and a bath enters the room carrying a laptop. Scruffy T shirt, jeans and sneakers. He sits on a mat, opens the laptop, turns it on. Fingers prayer beads while it boots. And shouts “fuck” so loud my ass levitates off the chair and slams back down. What the hell was that about? Some Zen thing? “Shit,” he shouts and twists his head back and forth like he’s trying to snap it off. He’s blinking out morse code with his eyelids. “Cocksucker!” I look around to gauge the reaction. None. Is this a practical joke for the new guy? His laptop displays the Windows desert island scene. He corkscrews into a full lotus position, top of his feet resting on his thighs, hands forming the cosmic mudra oval in front of his groin, and taps a golden bowl with a golden stick. Gonggggg. Gongggg. Gonggg. I’m sweating bullets already. No windows. The door is shut. No breeze. It’s hot for September. I’m not going to make it. Stuck in a tomb with this madman and his followers. Something in my chest stirs, wants out of here. The group is chanting in English. . . . I vow to overcome them. . . . are limitless . . . I vow to . . . . Then silence. I shut my eyes, place my hands on my lap and start to count breaths. One, on the in-breath. Two, on the out-breath. Up to ten and start again. Focus on the breath. He clears his throat so loudly I expect to see his lungs splatter on the wall. This is not going to work. How can I possibly concentrate with . . . “motherfucker.” His face puckers. Then it relaxes and puckers and relaxes and puckers. Wait a minute. He’s got Tourette’s. That must be it. Well, this should be interesting. Meditating with a guy being tortured by Tourette’s. Great. I should have brought my walkman. Could have caught the Met game at least. I give up on meditating. Just sit there gawking at him going through contortions. He seems to be fighting back the noises, the tics. Slowly, his body relaxes. His face calms. Pretty impressive. I thought it was impossible to control. I should be inspired. But I’m disappointed. Show’s over. Now what do I do? Meditate? If he can do it, I can at least try. Back to breathing. When I reach ten a few times, I only count on the in-breath. Pretty soon I stop counting. I get lost in the breath. I disappear. No self. Just the breath entering and leaving the body. Part of me, a dim voice buried in the brain, says this can not be happening so quickly. Shut up, I say, and go back to the breaths. Focus on the tip of the nostril where the air comes in, the diaphragm pushing the lungs up, the air rushing out of the nose. I’m gone but nobody’s home to appreciate it. I’ve disappeared. A serpent of energy uncoils from the spine. It’s been lurking there all this time. Shooting up the back and into the brain. A firestorm of electrical impulses engulfs the body. The limbs are twitching. The breaths, time, me, life – all stop. All is one. What are you doing here, Maurice says. He’s normal here. No Tourette’s. This is your first sesshin. You should not be here. The energy that was once a serpent smiles. There’s nothing to say. Maurice knows that. Otherwise, he would not be here. It’s time for walking meditation now, he says. Smile. You’ll lose it when I hit the sticks together. Fall back down to earth. You may never get back here. In this life. Usually, it’s one and done. The smile consumes the energy, is the energy, floating in white nothingness, a neutrino in a vast universe of void. Yes, it’s all impermanent, he says. I know that. Don’t you think I know that? I’m a Zen master for chrissake. Maurice sounds peeved. I’m not peeved. Fuck you. Stop it. You’re breaking my concentration. Pow. Pow. He hits the sticks together with the force of an atom bomb. The noise follows me down. Me. I’m back. Where was I? The others are scrambling to their feet. Lining up. They walk slowly out the door. Each puts one foot slowly down. Heel first, then the toes. Inch forward. Pivot the hips. Put the next foot down. Hands folded in front of them at the waist. I’m still in the chair. Laughing like a loon. None of this matters. Everything matters. One of them looks back at me and pins me with a glare. Like if he didn’t have to do this silly walk right now, he’d kick my ass. How did this happen? Was that an enlightenment experience? Satori, I think they call it. You have a very exalted opinion of yourself, Maurice says out loud. He’s still on his mat. Do I? Who cares? He starts to twitch again. From deep inside. He’s trembling. A tortured “fuck” explodes from his voice box, fills the room, washes out into the hall, after the line of praying zombie Zen walkers. He puffs out his cheeks, rolls his eyes, coughs, and repeats the sequence. Can’t you get medication for that? Shit. I mean, no offense. Oh. Oh. Oh. Am I. Am I. Am I. Annoying you. Annoying. Annoying. Well, it is annoying. You must be aware of that? You think you can have satori without compassion? With out com-passion. I thought there are no rules in Zen? If you meet the Buddha, kill him, and all that. The conga line files back in the room, bows and sits. We have a visitor tonight, Maurice says. He coughs loudly three times while rocking in place. He is new to Zen. But he believes he has achieved satori tonight. Are you jealous, Roshi? I kid, but the very skinny woman on the mat in front of me gulps in her breath. He smiles, coughs and rocks in place. Without compassion, no satori is possible. Fuck. Shit. Piss. Do you want me to leave? The skinny woman turns to stare at me. Her eyes bore into my forehead, but something stops me from looking at her. I don’t know why, but she frightens me. I don’t want anything. Fuck, shit, piss. I am upsetting you. I will leave. The skinny woman shakes her head. What the fuck is your problem, bitch, I say. Hah, she says. With your karma, do you really think you can achieve enlightenment? My mind is beginning to filter out his herky-jerky ticks and obscenities. And focus on what is behind them. Karma? What do you mean? Do you know the story of Ahimsaka, he says. No. Okay if I smoke? I reach into my pocket for my pack of Camels, but the old man next to me reaches over and grabs my arm. He lived in Buddha’s time. He wore a necklace of rotting fingers he cut from the people he murdered. I rip my arm from the old man’s grasp. Next one who touches me is going to regret it, I say. Do you know why he killed those people? Enlighten me, oh great Zen Master Maurice, I say. Because his master was afraid of him. He thought Ahimsaka was going to kill him and take his job as head Brahmin teacher. So he told Ahimsaka that he had finished teaching him and that Ahimsaka now had to pay him one thousand human fingers. The master hoped that his student would himself be killed in his quest to pay the price. Ahimsaka went to a nearby forest and killed anyone who passed by. He hacked a finger from each and shared the rest with scavengers. Was he not worthy of praise for persevering? For trying to do what his teacher requested? Well, technically, killing innocent people just to meet the whims of someone more powerful than you is probably not ethical, I say. Even in the wacky world of Zen. The six followers smirk or pretend to ignore me. What do you think became of Ahimsaka? Since this is some kind of Zen riddle, I assume he achieved enlightenment and lived happily ever after. The Buddha heard of him and, in his infinite compassion, went to the forest to stop him. Ahimsaka did not know who the Buddha was and chased after him to get his finger. He had 999 fingers by then and was desperate to reach his goal, pay his teacher and put an end to his miserable life. But no matter how fast Ahimsaka ran, he could not catch the enlightened one. I laugh. Sounds like the gingerbread man. The serial murderer and the gingerbread man, a fable for our times. So was the Buddha eaten by a fox? Maurice stands up and yells: Ahimsaka shouted at the Buddha to stand still. He drops back down into the lotus position. And the Buddha said “I am still, but you are not.” Ah, here comes the punch-line. Ahimsaka asked the Buddha what he meant, and the Buddha said: “I am still because I harm no living being. You killed your bosses and therefore you are not still.” Silence. I know this trick. Used it in witness interviews. Keep quiet long enough, and the witness will volunteer information to fill the gap. Maurice shakes, shimmies and grimaces. More silence. Maurice trembles as if he’s holding in an explosion of verbal diarrhea. With every second I feel the tension mount. When he erupts, it will be a truly terrible display. Okay, I’ll bite, I say. The fable does not make a lot of sense. Logically, if the murderer was moving and Buddha was still, the killer should have caught fatso and . . . The penny dropped. Did you say he killed his bosses? Silence. Gonggg. Gonggg. Gonggg. The group settles in for another round of breathing. Did he really say the murderer killed his bosses? Must have been a slip of the tongue. He has Tourette’s for god’s sake. Or maybe I misheard him. Is this guilt? I did the world a favor. They deserved it. I gained nothing from it. I didn’t even get their jobs. There is nothing to be guilty about. But how could he know about them? The one in New York happened twelve years ago. Another robbery gone bad. It was news for maybe a week max. The California one was ten years ago. Another anonymous hit and run accident. Didn’t last three days in the local media. I must have imagined it. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m losing it. But I can’t just leave. He’ll know. What will he know, asshole? He knows nothing. Maybe he’s related to one of them. Think. Did you see him at either wake? At the funerals? He looks like he’s in his twenties. Late twenties. He would have been a teenager back then. Did either of them have children? I can’t remember. She was a lesbo, but she mentioned an ex. What did she call him? Piggy, I think. God. Imagine being married to that bitch. Hell on earth. Clack. Clack. Here they go again. Walking meditation. What a farce. If they only knew how ridiculous they looked. What was that Monty Python bit? The department of silly walks. I hear a door open at the end of the hall and the conga line disappears. Me and Maurice are alone in the room again. An army came to kill Ahimsaka, he says, to punish him for all the murders he had committed. But Buddha vouched for him, and they let Ahimsaka go. That night, Ahimsaka went back to his master’s house and stabbed her in the heart, ran her over with his car. Then he cut his former master’s finger off and put it in the bag containing the 999 other fingers and placed the bag on his master’s chest. Who are you? I say. He fidgets. Clears his throat. Loudly. Three times. Silence. What do you mean he ran her over with his car? There were no cars back then. Another round of throat clearing followed by head shaking. Ahimsaka returned to the Buddha and spent the rest of his days seeking enlightenment. The Buddha knew what he had done, but said nothing. When Ahimsaka died, he became a hungry ghost unable to leave this world, unable to be reborn, unable to do anything other than bother the living day and night. Like the woman you killed. That is what you will become. A hungry ghost. Like her. What are you talking about? He snorts like he’s about to hawk a big glob of sputum. Slaps his thighs. Repeats the sequence. I’m too numb to move. How is this happening? Is the whole thing an elaborate sting? The flyer, the six extras, the sesshin, the phony Roshi, the Ford Taurus wagon parked outside, all part of a scheme to get me to admit my guilt? I look around for the camera. This is the part of the cop show where the murderer confesses. On tape. The part where he is led off camera by two burly cops while the detectives make sarcastic zingers about the irony of it all. A tantô dagger lies on the floor between us. How did it get there? I recognize it, of course. It has a history. Or so the homeless vet who sold it to me said. Disgraced samurai. General Shibasaki on Tarawa. Hell, I pricked douche bag’s heart with it and we still use it as a prop on the bondage site. How fitting. The silver blade glimmers in the light of the two electric candles on either side of the gold Buddha on the table next to Maurice. Here is your koan, Maurice says. Does a hungry ghost have Buddha nature? Do not be bound by words. Use the blade like a flower. Why are you doing this, you crazy son of a bitch? Here is a hint. Many live unskillful lives. But they still serve a valuable purpose. They allow us to practice compassion, patience, equanimity, non-anger, non-hatred. By cutting their lives short, you deprived so many of the opportunity to practice these skills. That is why your karma is to be reborn as a hungry ghost and to waste countless lifetimes just to get another taste of the limitless. But you can change your karma. I slump out of my chair. Fall to my knees. How do you know about them? He turns his head slowly to the right. Strains to turn it a little bit more than he can. His face screws in pain. Are you related to one of them? Is that it? He turns his head to the other side. You think I killed them? That’s nonsense. He was mugged. She was a hit and run victim. They never found the mugger, the knife, the driver or the car involved. You’re delusional if you think I had anything to do with either one. You didn’t see the car? You parked next to it, she says. My former boss is sitting on a mat across from me. Was she the skinny woman I was afraid to look at before? We don’t have all night, she says. Can we just get this over with? You know how this goes. You slit your belly with the knife, the cops draw a chalk line around you, make some wisecracks about this Buddha bullshit and tomorrow the Staten Island Advance runs a front pager about the porn king losing his battle with depression. She lights up a Gitane, one of those pretentious French cigarettes she always smoked. You are not real, I say. This is not real. Maybe I’m still meditating. Or I’m just hallucinating from lack of sleep. Fat chance, asshole, she says. Pick up the knife. If you’re too much of a coward to cut open your belly, go for the neck. It will be over before you know it. Are you dead? No. I’ve just been vacationing underground for the past ten years, she says. Pick up the knife. I pick up the knife. It is quiet. Except for Maurice gurgling on his own spit. I will not do it. Not yet. Eventually, she’ll break me. I know that. She rides my nightmares, hides in the corner of my vision and flits away when I turn my head, taunts me from the crowd at Shea Stadium when the camera pans the stands. Every day and every night, she is there. So why should I have thought tonight would be any different? The police are waiting outside when I leave. Apparently, the acolytes called them and kept watch while I waved the knife and shouted at the empty zafu in front of their beloved Roshi Tourette. Are we going to Bellevue, I ask the black cop who takes my dagger and frisks me against his car. It crosses my mind that I have just handed the NYPD the weapon I used to murder douche bag, but I am too tired to care. I notice the Ford Taurus is gone. If it was there at all. You been there before, he says. Not yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Hungry ghost bitch looks on. I don’t want her coming with us, I tell the cop. She’s bad news. Who you talking about? The anorexic ghost. Oh, you going to Bellevue all right, he says. You can count on it. Can they give me something to sleep, I say. I haven’t slept in weeks. That’s why I was acting a little crazy in there. I didn’t mean to scare anyone. He gently pushes me in the back of the squad car. As we drive over the Verrazano, I ponder the koan the Roshi gave me. Does a hungry ghost have Buddha nature? Yes, says the hungry ghost bitch sitting next to me, and no. She barks, and I feel the serpent burrowing deep into my coccyx never to return.