Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

JC Reilly

Pioggia

by JC Reilly

October 2020

In Venice, the rain begs you to write its own poem, though something about the way it falls here hinders you. Not drops at all, but insidious and slinky slippage, like imaginary serpents of water. It coils around my hand and wiles my pen into writing about something else entirely—candy or an aquarium or memory. (The rain will appear in those poems, but only incidentally.) Even now, as a few desultory tourists shamble and splash through the mostly empty Campo Santo Stefano, under umbrellas too deboli to divert the showers, a poem about the rain begins to slither out of reach. My attention shifts five thousand miles to the west, to you, to downpours more symbolic. I mourn our amore tormentato, begin to write of passions doused, ruminate how la tempesta between us never quite dries up, though sometimes conflict dwindles to a lace-fine mist. Mist. A water word, la nebbia. Venice should have a thousand words for water. For a moment, I am centered: back in this ancient city, I focus again on the afternoon’s deluge, feel the slinking wetness in my hair and shoes, notice the way it sneaks down the sides of my sweet martini melograna, even under the heavy awnings at Le Café Venezia. Across the square, the rain glitters on old masonry under clouds so low they seem to ruffle the tops of the buildings like collars. On the ground, the rain moves in sinuous turns instead of collecting in puddles. But the words before me reflect none of this, saturated as they are with regret. The Veneziani call these storms temporali, because after a time, they blow out. But ours will not blow out. The rain has snaked its way into our lives for good.

JC Reilly writes across genres to keep things interesting. What Magick May Not Alter, her Southern Gothic novel-in-verse, came out this spring from Madville Publishing. When she’s not writing or serving as the Managing Editor of Atlanta Review, she plays tennis, crochets, or practices her Italian. Follow her @Aishatonu on Twitter or follow her cats @jc.reilly on Instagram.