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

Nancy Huggett

A Brother Is

by Nancy Huggett

April 2022

A brother is to love. A brother is to hold, enfold in newly sistered arms. To dress up, to stroller push around the block, to make laugh and clap with pure delight at circus acts and puppet shows. A brother is to soothe and shush with lullabies when adults clink cut-crystal glasses and bedtime ends the day.

A brother is to love. To tie tightly, safely on a rope and lower out the back bedroom window to assess the escape theory with fellow detective/lady thief/adventurer/best friend Basia. A brother is to test the best paper airplanes, concoct costumes, plot treasure hunts, tell horror stories in the night and lead quietly into the furnace room where the monster lives, but always be there to hold his hand.

A brother is to wonder at the gift of hanging upside down in trees for hours, yards above adult reach to escape the sudden shock of school. Is to watch while his tender fingers fix the fracture in a wing and feed a house finch back to flight. A brother is to lead you down paths of loving that have no answer for disconnection, for truant travels to the mountain and wandering among the trees and shadows. A brother shows you slant an escape hatch from a world that can’t quite pin him and him with no longing to be pinned.

A brother is to love.

A brother is to stand in a woodland clearing offering poison berries in your outstretched palm after a recitatif of suicide threats that only manifests in broken bonds and a hostage kind of love. A brother is to hold tight while he rages in the field one night determined to burn the whole place down and know that your holding cannot fix him, and suddenly you are fine with that. Still thick with love that is expanding to fill the fix-it places in your mind. A brother is to save from jail, to mortgage joy for a little boy remembered.

A brother is to watch through binoculars from the beach while he paddles at the outer edge in search of danger. A brother is to love while he turns his back, always looking back, placing walls, broken glass, amber liquid, stolen goods, cocaine, scarification, as a barrier and bond test between you. A brother leads you to wonder, with loupe in eye, at the stories of the wounds that tattoo his shaven head, muscled arms, eyes narrowed looking into the camera, willing for one sitting to put up with your art.

A brother is to love. To test your patience, your wideness of heart, your intent, your focus, and come up short. A brother is to hang up on, when he rages on the phone, and set estrangement as the price you’ll pay for peace. A brother is to teach you the meaning of stroke and frontal lobe and aggression, but only too late after he has collapsed between two houses, dead before his face hits the ground.

A brother is to love.

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who lives, writes, and caregives in Ottawa, Canada on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people.