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.

Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

Shannon Bowring

Avian Elegies

by Shannon Bowring

December 2020

Nothing about it is fair. Little darling, baby bird. Smashed up crumpled on the side of the highway, one wing detached from iridescent body. Blood like the rust that collects on your grandfather’s old boat, the one right now bobbing on a lake a hundred miles north of here. You promised as he lay dying of rotten tumors that you’d keep her going strong. But you’ve never taken that boat anywhere.

Little darling, baby bird.

Your mother used to pluck chickens in the backyard surrounded by puddles of shit, hummed Vivaldi as she wrung the scrawny necks. All that white fluff twirling in the air. You vomited on your boots, ill-fitting relics from a sister gone too soon, vanished from the farm one winter night when the stars were blue and the empty road was calling. Your father never spoke her name again. 

Nothing about it is fair. 

Alien images on a screen, a screen they turn away from you when they see the lives beneath the surface have stopped their ceaseless flutter. 

Little darling, baby bird. 

When he left, your husband took the books with glossy pages where you had circled your favorite names. Sandpiper, starling, siskin. You kept the other books, the ones filled with pages of his first choices. Ava, Callum, Evelyn.  

Nothing about it is fair.

The hospital parking lot teems with seagulls fighting over half a drive-thru hamburger. Over and over, the smallest gull is shoved away. You can’t stand the starving look in his black eyes; it reminds you of the hollow tube of the MRI machine before you were pushed inside, where for two hours you lay still and compliant, holding your breath and letting it out whenever the radiologist said so in her pretty sing-song voice. 

Little darling, baby bird.

You watch a robin outside your kitchen window, her russet belly, the white circles around her eyes, so small and bright, alive. The doctor’s on the phone. His voice is sad, serious. You make a follow-up appointment to let him feel better about delivering this news on such a sunny gorgeous afternoon. But it’s an appointment you’ll never keep. It’s early summer, and your mother’s expecting your visit; she’s depended on you ever since your father took off on the same dark road your sister took so long ago. 

Nothing about it is fair. 

Your mother hasn’t plucked chickens in years, but she still hums Vivaldi as she watches the metal cages in the corner of her living room, where two yellow cockatiels chatter all day. She used to have a conure, boasting vibrant feathers that brushed against her face when it perched on her shoulder. It died. Some sort of autoimmune disease. You spared your mother the grief of carrying its lifeless body out to the backyard. You dug a hole six inches deep. The plumage a rainbow underground. Little darling, baby bird. Nothing about it is fair.

Shannon L. Bowring’s work has appeared in several journals, including The Seventh Wave, The Maine Review, and Hawai’i Pacific Review. She has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net Award. Shannon is currently pursuing her MFA at Stonecoast, where she serves as Fiction Editor of the Stonecoast Review.