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.

Deborah Adams

My Bad

by Deborah Adams

September 2023

I can travel any when. I have. I know firsthand the rules aren’t what you think.

An example: I snapped up D. B. Cooper as he plummet-floated nearly splatted not to save him not to trap him but to feed a selfish hungry curiosity.

Transported him to my native era. “Money is useless here. Return it,” Dan said (I call him Dan) and I did, although a teensy math error spewed a few bills into 1980. No prob.

Easy to get it wrong at first. Second chances are a time traveler’s forte. Next I tucked it, neat, beneath a first class seat, Flight 305. Also, because time’s a fickle fluid puzzle.

I used it all before Dan boarded, left it stacked on cold hard benches in parks and depots and empty churches buried it in Mason jars poured the lot into the pocket of a thrift store coat.

Once I kept it all for my collection stored it in between the real magic bullet and Lizzie’s bloody never-did-they-find-it written-out confession.

Other years I dropped it in red kettles piled it up for Al Capone then took it back before Geraldo wasted hype.

I bought a congressman and some lies (redundancy), played 200,000 lotteries put every ticket in a single mother’s purse left tens and twenties sprawled on diner tables for waitresses who wipe down your sticky counters.

Again and again transtemporal magic blew for good people or bad ones needy ones glad ones maybe you maybe today.

And Dan? I left him right where I found him, freefalling into the dark with a briefcase full of money and a foolproof plan for recurring escape.

Deborah-Zenha Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry. Her work has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One, Sheila-na-gig, and other journals. You’re invited to visit her website to read more of her work. www.Deborah-Adams.com