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.

Kitty Jospé

Where Love Will Need No Proof

by Kitty Jospé

April 2021

In the slipstream of s-t-r-e-e-t
an obese man strolls on a wide strada,
not eager to have much to do
with people … perhaps because
of his steamship size…

and sees a trim woman—
the one he saw sniff
rutabaga at the store.
Chances are, a soft tap
of sunlight won’t make a kiss
of difference to either one.

Her heart, withered by bitterness
once was light as a paper avioncito—
but any propellers are lost in the
rubble of what’s left.
He doesn’t know anything but lyrics
about Amore—but
some slipstream
is working
on this s-t-r-e-e-t.
They
recognize
each other, have come
to know what fat and lean protect.

They live in a time of Tweets, twisted takes a so-called
leader has taken to Twitter the way some take to drink
and read instructures…
I mean instructions,
from Sun Yung Shin
to put their names
in a volcano, to make a series of signals … as cli-
mate threat and mass ex-
tinction no longer are fictions.

They recognize those who can
only read … me cutting off
name … and what will become
cl I m ate and everything but
double i in extinction.

They find a bench … he lowers his bulk,
carefully. She makes cryptic
remarks, not about him, but
those who broke her heart.

She’ll have nothing to do with love.
And yet,
look
how she takes his arm as they rise,
carry on in the slipstream.

Kitty Jospé is a retired French teacher who received her MFA from Pacific University. She has been a docent at the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, NY, since 1998. Since 2008 she has moderated a weekly poetry appreciation meeting at two branches of the local library. She has published six books, and her poems appear in numerous publications and anthologies.