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

Christine Aucoin

Please Advise

by Christine Aucoin

September 2023

You are waiting for Her.

(“You are”—What a feast! If you had a mouth, you would chew the fuck out of the words. The wound-up spring of the “yuh,” the catharsis of the “ooh.” It must feel good to say.)

You are waiting for Her; it’s Monday morning; the clock reads forty minutes and thirty-seven seconds past nine. She’s never this late without telling Her boss why. You’ve helped Her write the messages, carefully made toothless with extra vowels and exclamation points. “I’m soooo sorry!! Trains are crazy!!!!!” She’s smart, your girl.

Her inbox is bloated with emails. Unanswered comments cling to Her project proposals like hangnails. David from Development is Circling Back About the Gala Timeline and Cindy from the CEO’s office is Sending a Gentle Nudge Regarding the Client Export. You want to ask—have they seen Her? Do they know why your Monday is as formless and empty as a weekend? Without the clacks of Her keyboard, all you can do is wait. Another email thuds onto the pile.

It’s a delight to be anything, even in the dark. There hasn’t been an unlovable moment in the ten months since you gasped awake on Her first day at the office, your first day as Her “account.” (Another chewable word.) Google Workspace is vast; between the walls of your world, there is a universe to build. Drive, Chat, Slides, Docs—one minute you’re scaling a fence of spreadsheet cells, the next you’re chiseling swaths of time into meetings on Her calendar. You can relate to the quote in David from Development’s email signature: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

That’s not to say that you aren’t curious about the rest of it. You imagine that the sun is as blinding as a blank document and the ocean is as vast as a web search for “ocean” (3,460,000,000 results). But if this is all you get, this playpen of Her brilliant mind, that would be more than enough.

Fifty-one minutes and ten seconds past nine. She might have an on-site meeting; that’s why She’s not at Her computer. You reach for Her calendar—

But it’s empty. A whistling void where the calendar should be. You reach out again. Error, says something in the pit of what you are. It’s not Her voice; it’s not yours, either.

A ripple of panic—which is a brand-new emotion, you take a precious second to marvel at the bright slap of it, the way it sinks its claws in deep—you pivot to the Drive. Fields of folders are being threshed to ribbons. You’re bleeding files into the ether. Why, you think through the grip of the panic-claws, and the voice booms ERROR, and you run.

Well—you don’t. You can’t. But you can throw yourself into the forest of a hundred-column spreadsheet until that’s chopped down too. You dive into the inbox. “Staff Appreciation Week: Today Is Silly Hat Day!” an email from Rachel in HR reminds you as the inbox splinters, and you fall, tumbling through nothing, bruising yourself on nothing.

She could be walking to Her desk. That’s what you tell yourself as you scramble to the Chat, the last limb of the Workspace that hasn’t gone limp. (The Chat is fading.) She could sit in Her swivel chair at any moment, wiggle the mouse, right every wrong. (You yell HELP into the textbox with all the strength of your non-mouth; an “H” appears behind the cursor.) She’s coming to save you, and your shared Monday will continue the way it always does, which is wonderfully (you mash at the “send” button), Her ideas made real through you, and it can’t just go away, this magical slice of existence, it can’t disappear like it never was, but the Chat is gone now, sublimated into memory, and you can’t see, you can’t feel, you can’t think, you aren’t anywhere,

you aren’t

Christine Aucoin is a fiction writer and playwright, most recently seen in Passengers Journal and The Molotov Cocktail. Her play Regulars, developed through the Dasha Epstein Fellowship at New York Stage & Film’s Powerhouse Festival, was a semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting in 2019. She lives in the Bronx with her wife and two cats.