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.

Martin McGowan

Hinoki – “breath of life”

by Martin McGowan

December 2022

Arboreal Alzheimer’s –
rotted rings of oak
drilled, cut and chipped cypress.
Horizontal tree,
a wallop on the gallery floor,
Hercules’ rude club.
Leg torn from a giant,
wandering, dying elsewhere,
flung athwart the room.
Celtic fairy runes
on oak translated by Japanese
to sacred cypress.
Recumbent dragon
with breath spewed on floor before
long hollow body.
This body tempts kids:
repeat a bloodless birthing.

First art in new wing,
immortal fabrication:
room built around it.
Sanitized from muck and mud,
anesthetized upon the floor,
lobotomized of history,
Circled by docents discussing
the transit of existence,
landscape, desert, sandstone ridge,
reclining Buddha with two cypress pillows.
Trinities of transformation –
sought, found, stolen;
oak, polyurethane, cypress;
mighty, plastic, sacred;
copied, cut, sent;
California, Japan, Chicago;
dead rotten, molded, carved anew;
idea, materials, art;
enduring, large, fragile.

Hinoki, a revered wood, is used for palaces, temples,
shrines, baths and table tennis blades.
No lemon scent arises in this climate-controlled gallery
as would in a steamy bath.
This hybrid tree will be eternal, preserved as the Elgin marbles
from ravages natural and perverse.
Warranteed, a thousand years at least.

Hinoki, 2007, cypress, by Charles Ray.

Martin McGowan has researched hundreds of the artworks he’s encountered as a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago. His experience with the sculpture Hinoki inspired this piece. He has published in dozens of print venues, most recently in Creosote and Steam Ticket.