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

Kalani Padilla

Translator’s Note

by Kalani Padilla

February 2023

Inspired by section titles from the Nakama Japanese Language Textbook Series by Hatasa and Hatasa

Japanese Names

T/N: there is always a decision before what we think is the first decision, and here it is a matter of introductions. When Japanese give their name, they give family name first and given name second. They may even say their family name, only. Middle names are not traditionally assigned; they “do not exist.” But unspoken names do exist. They swim in and out of the iris.

Showing Respect in the Classroom

In order to form a question or request, you reveal your opinion of the person whom you ask. The sentence can take longer, like food made from scratch. Like oranges from seed. Chotto ii? Shitsumon aru. Shitsumon shite ii desu ka? This elongation happens in both Japanese and English. Got a sec? Question for you. Do you mind if I ask you a question? Synonymity exists only in degrees of respect and disrespect. In my view, this is a function of diction in English, while in Japanese it is a function of syntax. Deep in the tonal memory, very deep.

“Present Tense”

If you were to ask me 逆立ちしますか? it would either mean, “is a headstand something that you are able to do, that you do on principle, as a habit or fact?” or “are you going to do a headstand?” By which I mean the Japanese present tense is only the “present tense.” The doorknob is not fixed to the daily life of a person; the form of the question holds no key to the right now. In order to do that you need the bigbig verb: to be. In this case, intimacy is represented by two more characters: 逆立ちして[いる]? Are you existing in a headstand, now?

Can I know what you’re up to? Can I be a part of the reality of your present tense?

Describing Where Things Are

But also, whether they are inside an animate body, or an inanimate body. Is it an act of creativity to remove a thing so many steps from its animate constituents that we cannot recognize it as animate by ancestry? In any case I cannot tell you where something is unless I tell you that it’s breathing there, or not. A poetic principle of the copula. Are you in a headstand. Are you breathing.

Greetings and Bowing

Imagine that in Japanese, bodiedness exists opposite of what we call “[—-]spreading” and “{—-}splaining.” It exists by the concept of aisatsu. The ideograms for [ approaching, drawing near ] and for [ to be imminent ]

「挨」「拶」

Japanese people greet each other by bowing. I am fond of the violent lore that in older societies, to bow was to offer one’s neck to the stranger’s sword.

「 」 「 」

They touch their foreheads to the place (the non-place?) that separates them from one another. Coming to the source text, I bow and touch my native language to the semantic river between me and it, or me and its creator.

[ ][ ]

And then I get into the boat. Leaving someone’s presence, I introduce them to my absence saying 連れします —

— I am going to be rude, now.

Kalani Padilla (they/she) is a Filipino-American and Kamaʻaina poet from Mililani, Hawaiʻi, a Whitworth alumn of English (BA) and Theology (MA). Kalani now tends home in Missoula, Montana—an MFA candidate, writing tutor, night baker, and river rat. Their work appears in Bamboo Ridge Press, Figure 1, and with the Academy of American Poets.