May 2021

Editor’s Note

I see a piece of art as a timestamp. With that in mind, the process of making art could look like working with a pan balance—before and after on either side of the fulcrum. The timestamp is a refined moment, a crisp reflection. And yet, the artist is never at rest, the scales in constant motion. The past, present, and future are in play.

This month’s issue marks the end of what we at Waterwheel Review call Season 1. We chose to publish nine months out of the year to ensure we get a break. Time to rest by a favorite body of water this summer. We also wanted the opportunity to reflect on our latest season and prepare for the upcoming one.

As editors and publishers, we’re finding our own balance: letting go, reassessing, and building; the pandemic adding a blurry lens to the process. It’s apropos that our May authors are doing the same.

The past comes alive in full color, texture, and flavor in Lisa Creech Bledsoe’s “While Looking for Eating Utensils in My Uncle’s Kitchen.” Belongings are memories and a family history that says, “All saved, passed down.” How do we decide what to keep and what to throw away? What if what remains are tools useful only to the craftsman?

Charlotte Friedman’s “Alams for Cleaning Out the Painter’s House” uncovers that oftentimes, it’s the past we want instead: “visit me tonight / I want to taste color / in my dreams.” But, at some point, we must move on.

“Like no one was ever here,” says a voice in Tamara Best’s “Snake Fence,” a piece that honors a story of which the speaker knows nothing, except what was left behind. And that is enough. Something was built. The past reflected onto the present.

May 1, 2021, is a timestamp. Each of our issues is a work of art, but the last issue of our first season provides closure. With each second, Season 1 is further in the past. The pandemic made it difficult for me to revel in the creation of each issue. So, before I move on, I’m going to hold the scales balanced and cherish the moment.

Cheryl Wilder

April 2021

Editor’s Note

I live with my husband and three young sons on the gentle eastern slope of a valley cut through by a creek. The western hill climbs steep and is overspread with boulders carried by an ancient glacier. Stone tossed against stone creates cracks and holes; one triangle crevasse is so deep and dark, we call it the bear cave. It is spring, and my sons tell me the bear will come out soon.

Primarily a creative nonfiction writer, I am motivated by the origins of the verb form of “essay”: to try. I believe literature, unlike much informational and theoretical writing, does not solve so much as it attempts to capture in words ineffable parts of the human experience. Literature does not promise a destination; rather, it creates a new form of transport, a “line of words,” as Annie Dillard says, that moves us to surprising places. Literature may take us on an adventure up a hill to a crack in the granite, where we find shelter, sense daylight, and emerge when hungry.

Our April authors pry open these cracks for me. I find myself entering and re-entering their writing to feel around for what’s there, to witness what comes to light. In Kitty Jospé’s “Where Love Needs No Proof,” a chance meeting results in a single touch, and with it, the narrowest sliver of hope. In Jonie McIntire’s “After You’ve Saved a Life,” out of silence comes a ring, and a voice in need reaches a voice that can help. And in Dawn Denham’s “A Brief History of Blue,” mud wasps nest on a blue porch, the porch hugs a house, and out of that house materializes a reassembled life.

Our companions this month lead me to surprises as well. The son of two former slaves becomes an icon of the American folk music revival, often writing songs in the aftermath of tragic river floods. A Greek immigrant uses elemental color to create vibrant images that seem to dance on the page. A tower of humans balances upon the strength of one, on the soles of his feet, simply to show that it’s possible, that it’s beautiful. And hidden inside blustering Tweets, we find, of all things, love.

Last week, the first wasp made its way through my attic vent. The first stinkbug buzzed through the hole in our screen door. The first tulips pushed through the mulch by the fence. It is April, and with these tiny births—encounters and phone calls and houses, wasps and tulips and awakening bears—the world is made new.

Suzanne Farrell Smith

March 2021

Editor’s Note

John Prine was one of my favorite writers. When he died of Covid, I took a day off to mourn him. As always, I found refuge in his lyrics. 

His songs are full of stories that somehow marry goofiness, poignancy, and deep sadness. Despite appreciation for his work, my husband can listen to Prine only in short spurts or he will sink into melancholy. I’m so surprised by this, because it’s the sadness that I appreciate most. Writing that captures our worries and griefs comforts me. No, much more. It buoys me. I rise.

All genuine hardship and loss boil down to the same elemental pain, and no one gets through this life unscathed. How lucky we are to see the proof—in prose, verse, music, painting—that we are not alone with our dark thoughts, this trembling uncertainty, that moment of boiling rage. I am channeled, and so I am heartened and then fortified. Now I’m ready to give it all another go.

As our March issue goes live, I am channeled by Erica Kent’s “The Shut-In,” a piece starring a version of myself I work hard not to be, and I know I am far from alone in that, as the pandemic has shown so many of us. In Danielle Joffe’s “Reduction,” I am heartened by a kind of courage I’ve had to summon myself, as have all the women I know. And “My New York Accent” by Anne Myles fortifies the “I am who I am” confidence we’re all building and rebuilding. 

I cried at my last John Prine concert. When he hit the stage, strumming and singing, his age knocked me back, and I knew that he would die before I could see him again. As he performed a rough and speedy version of “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” I put my face in my hands and wept. Then I wiped my tears and sank into him and his music, savoring every syllable, every note. Every sad smile.

Claire Guyton

February 2021

Editor’s Note

Our February authors have me thinking of water.

Water is supple and strong. Nourishing and precarious. Its constant movement erodes—snowmelt in spring, ocean waves breaking on shoreline, or the downpour we see in CG Miller’s writing—where beauty and friction meet.

A watershed helps to direct water, a ridge of land that separates the flow of groundwater into creeks, basins, or oceans. Bill Vernon speaks to the mysteries of water luring a young boy to dream and discover. A place where hopping, slithering, and swimming thrive. Where a night chorus of insects and amphibians remind us there is magic in the world.

I’m also thinking of the transformative power of a watershed moment, like the long-awaited return of a loved one in Stephanie Friedman’s piece—a crossroads where a woman is steadfast in what she wants.

This journal’s name derives from “The Waterwheel” by Rumi, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet. When I first read the poem back in 2015, the lines, “Stay here, quivering with each moment / like a drop of mercury” explained what I wanted readers to experience.

I read Rumi’s poem differently today, after eleven months of the unbelievable stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty endured by so many of us. There’s a greater responsibility to his words, “The waterwheel accepts water / and turns and gives it away, / weeping.”

I speak for all of us at Waterwheel Review when I say, “We accept. We give away. We weep.”

Cheryl Wilder