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

Jonie McIntire

After You’ve Saved a Life

by Jonie McIntire

April 2021

A poetry book chosen at random—on the cover,
a grotesque of birds and woman in abstract
with title and author, rimmed by words like
fresh and raw and innovative. Inside,
everyone has a rapist, eats their menstrual blood
for strength, lives next door to a late teen
blonde with pigtails and pink sweater
long legs and a masters in blow job technique.
Here, we all end up puking or cutting at night
and by morning can’t explain how we got
fucked. If I’m reading this book right.

In high school, I worked on a suicide hotline.
Waited the long hours of quiet for the ring
that could mean loneliness or could mean
gun-ready stopme. You had to get past
a lot of panting what are you wearing and
you sound pretty. Lonesome shut-ins called most often,
but every once in a while, a sophomore feeling trapped,
an alcoholic divorcing. In the real world,
when that call comes in with none of the pomp
but all of the planned action, you have to use another line
to call the police. Don’t let them go, do whatever
you can to keep them on.

Award-winning book still open bed-side,
I fall asleep remembering, start to dream
that my house becomes the call center,
trained to the sounds of pain humming its tune.
I fill my house with those of us who’d
reached out before but slippery finger lost
our loved ones to their self-inflicted conviction.
I’d gather the poet, the woman, the men, the girl next door,
the bird in the poem near the end—trapped and torturous—
gather them up like fresh biscuits in a bowl,
hugged tight to soft breasts and carried to the table,
set out before the volunteers who listen closely,
who don’t lick at wounds and say how sexy,
the what’s your plan and do you have a safe place to go,
the stay where you are ones who say please
and reach for butter that has been out all day
so it’s soft and waiting with jam canned by hand
no sugar added but seeds removed, and we try
to fill our bellies before returning to the long
wait where we practice Hello,
I’m here to help you.

Ohio poet Jonie McIntire is the author of chapbooks Semidomesticated (Red Flag Poetry, 2021), Beyond the Sidewalk (Nightballet Press, 2017), and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and she hosts the reading series Uncloistered Poetry. Her writing has been published across the US and even stamped into cement as part of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Sidewalk Poetry series. https://www.joniemcintire.net.