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

Laine Harrington

Philippines, 1973

by Laine Harrington

October 2021

With thanks to Matthew Dickman’s “Lents District”

Whenever I arrive, walls
weaken the swell of the bay, someone passes around
a jug of rice wine, rides a caribou, gets married
in the jungle, kills an animal then
drinks its blood, lights
a fire, roasts a pig.
It is a marvel, each time
clouds of peach, rose, and
brilliant orange,
a sunrise that envelopes, then below
7,000 islands of green.
And if by sea,
sailing into Corregidor,
the Spanish corregir, “to correct,”
a way of making peace.

All of us have host families, mine
with geckos on its walls, the road to it
so pock-marked they call it
the moonwalk. Jeepneys try to navigate,
their jingle-jangle baubles
an odd accompaniment to the melodies that
scratch from loudspeakers, the Beatles, Bee Gees, Bread.
Here, the matriarch, her policeman husband
and their son named Boy. Can you imagine a whole country
with grown men named Boy?
Each night I checked
the dogs, making sure we were not
having them for dinner, calling them my kapatid
(siblings), the only living beings I had to hold.

Here, I almost stepped on a python, there where my host brother
climbed a tree like a monkey
dropping coconuts,
where my feet swelled with mosquito bites.
Where I slept sardine-like with 16
mothers and their children on the bamboo floor
of a hut, animals bellowing below.
The toilet, a hole in the ground
around the corner.

It is a land of infinite rice paddies
against a sky of inexplicable
blue, and all of it
incongruous to Manila, its bus stations
leaking diesel, a fog so heavy
it is difficult to find a bus.
This is where we saw the babies,
their distended bellies and monstrous eyes,
hungry. And there, a busload
of weeping
women, occasionally stopping to pee or vomit
by the side of the road. Some
have dysentery, you know what
that means.

In a cathedral of
feminist nuns, an impoverished
children’s choir
sings Imelda’s favorite song
sounding like
angels, her shoes and money a trope for disdain.
I like to imagine martial law
a giant rat, its long and lanky whiskers
sweeping the midnight streets
of violators
then letting them go.
When the monsoons come, the rat hunkers
down in the alcove of a whorey motel.
There are so many.
The day the hijackers took over the plane, guns in hand
and grenades tied to waists, she forgot
it was her birthday.

Dear Manila, dear Mindanao, even if bullets whiz
over the head of the boy I like, but mostly
dearest Morong,
I was your first Peace Corps dropout, your
dream exalted, then run aground.
In the end, someone sleeps in a hammock by the river, someone
lunches with the mayor, someone gets
dengue fever, someone cries
on a street corner, and someone
understands finally, a new language,
the threads of imperialism
that stitch together
the fabric
of our sinew. My god, all of this
in my bones!

Laine Harrington is a writer, artist, and actor. Her publications include poetry, book reviews, and essays in various journals; presentations include numerous conference venues on the work of French philosopher Luce Irigaray. A California native, Laine has lived in the Philippines, Japan, and France. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley and is in constant training for a triathlon.