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.

Karly Vance

Supplication

by Karly Vance

October 2023

The first prayer I spoke
To the cloud of witnesses
Was your name. Not the holy of holies.
The golden goose I was sealed to.
No takebacks.

A fisherwoman once told me
A myth: there was a man
Who walked out on the mudflats
When the water was gone and
The flats were silent, shining like ice.

The mud looked solid, but wasn’t:
Swallowed him like a snake swallows.
He was trapped tug for tug.
Shins snapped, sound echoed back
Against the walls of the valley.

A fisherwoman once told me
A myth: it was you.
In this life you get
What you ask for.
No takebacks.

I search the house
For any bell that I can find to ring
To send a sound to fill a valley,
To release you into the arms
Of some helpless, hapless gods.

Karly Vance grew up in Bay City, Michigan, and studied writing at Hope College. Her writing has been published in The Offbeat, Common Ground Review, Dunes Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Madison Review. She lives with her husband and son in the Chicago area.