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.

Cheryl Wilder

In Its Distance

by Cheryl Wilder

February 2020 | Originally published by Prime Number Magazine (April 2018)

They are so like love, hurricanes.
First the rising tide and long wait on shore

then the whirlwind’s whistle, ripping trees
and the roof tiles peel off spiraling

to reach someone I left
years ago. He liked to feed me

from his fork, eyes watching with intrigue
every morsel enter my mouth

over my tongue. This matters because
the weight of a man’s gaze can stir a storm onshore

the sky darkens, uncertainty coils.
All I wanted was for him to tell me

it was forever, without reason or explanation—
because it was love. This is small in front of the sea.

He held me close, yet never asked me to stay,
so I started moving—the country slid 30,000 feet

below, cities of erratic lights huddled around bodies of water.

Cheryl Wilder is the author of the poetry collection Anything That Happens (March 2021) and the chapbook What Binds Us. Her work appears in Barely South Review, Prime Number Magazine, Verse Daily, Cream City Review, Literary Mama, Architects + Artisans, among other publications. In 2018, Cheryl served as writer-in-residence at SistaWRITE.