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.

Rebekah Bloyd

Now Are You

by Rebekah Bloyd

November 2022

Where now are you brother?
—Dan Taulapapa McMullin, “The Doors of the Sea”

In the worn Persian rug on a Munich floor. In the handmade bookcases against a
Santa Fe wall. In the cigarette your younger brother lights up. In the Eames chair ottoman
cleaned of cat pee. In the red-faced watch hugging my wrist. In the womb of Rachel, who
jitterbugs at lunchtime. In the key unlocking a tin of Spam. In the blue-ridged mug that warms
my hand. In the Siamese skirmish in the antique aquarium. In the copper plumbing of a Spokane
bungalow. In the neon tetra your younger brother pockets. In the Music from Big Pink. In the
buttons basket on the hearth. In the Yuban coffee can. In the yellow bar of Dial soap. In the plan
de Paris, framed. In the moon roof of the red Jetta. In Whitewater Preserve, on the Canyon View
Loop Trail. In the particulate gloom of an evergreen charnel. In the two sanctioned pills by the
hemlock tree. In the tax returns, April 15, 2018.

Rebekah Bloyd’s creative nonfiction, translations, and poems have appeared in Harper’s, Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, Catamaran, and elsewhere. Her recent collection At Sea features life in Venezuela, the West Indies, and in California, places where she’s worked, lived, loved, and walked the shifting shore. Rebekah makes her home in San José; she teaches writing and ecological practices at California College of the Arts.