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.

Michael Waterson

The Conqueror

by Michael Waterson

September 2023

The horse opera starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn,
miscasting so riotous there aren’t enough rotten tomatoes
in the tomato-picking world to launch at the screen, a bomb
shot downwind of a nuclear test site
at a time when A-Bomb tourism was exploding,
when Las Vegas casinos hawked spectacular views
of neon-bright mushroom clouds, and doomsday-
midnight gamblers caroused away
the countdown to a sunburst nuclear dawn,
on government assurance it was safe.

After the location wrap, producer Howard Hughes trucked
tons of desert dirt back to the studio to match
the color of terrain for realism in the final cut.
When forty-six of the cast and crew
were later overcome by carcinomas,
critics zeroed in on radiation exposure,
although (spoiler alert!) the fatalities fell
within the national statistical average:
Wayne, for one, inhabited a toxic nimbus
of smoke from his five-pack-a-day habit.

Hughes, it was whispered, passed his recluse years
pent up in his penthouse under a cloud of guilt
from his decision to shoot at those hazardous sites,
buying up every print of the film
to keep it locked away, and viewing his epic
obsessively in his Desert Inn hermitage,
while Wayne went on to greater triumphs,
vanquishing malignancy in his lungs before
losing his battle with stomach cancer.

Michael Waterson is a retired journalist originally from Pittsburgh. His career includes stints as a seasonal firefighter, San Francisco taxi driver, and wine educator. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including California Quarterly, Cathexis Northwest, and The Bookends Review. His first collection, Cosmology of Heaven and Hell, was recently published by The Poetry Box. He holds an MFA from Mills College. michaelwatersonpoetry.com.