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

Laurie Easter

Transmute

by Laurie Easter

May 2023

I unzip the lake, walk into what I am—
—Natalie Diaz

More than four years into my grief over losing my husband, I unzip the ocean, part it like the Red Sea, not as Moses or any figure inhabiting supreme God-like capabilities, but as a woman unzipping the vagaries of her life. I unzip the water, but it doesn’t part away leaving me dry; rather, it rushes in furiously around my ankles. So I step into the flavor of it—salty, fishy, scented with dulse and sea palm. The water cascades all around then rises quickly up to my thighs, my waist, my neck. The icy cold triggers a sharp inhalation of breath. The glass shards of my skin turn numb. Eventually, the numbness turns to warmth. I unleash myself, step further so that the water collapses over my head. Tendrils of kelp float like ribbons of hair moving in synchronized waves pulsing this way, then that. The salt stings yet purifies. I unzip my mind, lay down my burdens, my regrets, the secrets saddled onto me. I open my mouth and let the words I cannot speak unspool. Water rushes into my cheeks, consumes my throat, slides down my esophagus, fills my stomach. But I do not drown. I transmute. The pores of my skin dilate, millions of tiny gills oxygenated from beneath the surface. I let go my fear of the deep, dark unknown, of the danger of predators, of the potential for becoming lost. My chest unfurls like the pure white moonflower after dusk, ready for the nocturnal hour. With arms raised above my head and hands clasped together like a prayer, I cast my body outward, spiraling like a spinner dolphin, down, down, prepared to fall into darkness. But there is light, muted yet glistening. And color so bright I forget myself. Coral, turquoise, sienna. I touch the sand on the bottom, for there is a bottom. It is soft and fine, powdery yet with a slight grit. I scoop handfuls and toss it into the air, which of course is water. It scatters and floats, light glinting on the dispersing particles, shimmering, reflecting, and I see that when you are willing to brave the depths, there is beauty and light in darkness. I see floating sand is the mirror of stardust, that somewhere in the sky the same particles, the same light, floats freely in a weightless universe I will one day inhabit when I finally unzip not only the ocean, not only my skin, but this spirit of memory, of corporeal fascination, this containment.

Laurie Easter is the author of All the Leavings (Oregon State University Press, 2021), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Awards in creative nonfiction and winner of a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award in memoir. Her work appears in Brevity, The Rumpus, and Sweet Lit, among others. She lives off the grid in Southern Oregon. Find her at www.laurieeaster.com.