Watershed Review

What is Watershed Review?

Watershed Review is a literary magazine that includes prose, poetry, photography, and sometimes essays, scenes from plays, and illustrations. It was edited by students in English 415 (Literary Editing), a core course in the Literary Editing & Publishing Certificate Program. The magazine, founded in 1977, was published bi-annually by the English department of California State University, Chico, and goes on sale the last week of each semester.

Watershed Review, one of the oldest, continuously-published, student-edited literary magazines in the nation, was proud to be the recipient of the first ANNIE award from the Chico Council of the Arts for Contribution to Literature by an Organization.

Watershed Review is sponsored by the English Department at CSU, Chico and Instructionally Related Activities, funded by Student Activities fees.

Visit us at http://watershedcsuc.wordpress.com/. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Watershed-Review/.

Online Publication

The Spring 2013 edition can be found at http://www.csuchico.edu/watershed/2013-spring/.

To submit to Watershed Review visit this link: https://watershedreview.submittable.com/submit.

Selections

Dichondra

by Bob Garner

They were afraid of the deserted anthill. The way it
sat there, twelve-hands-high. The ghost of so much
busyness, afraid of the shadow it cast.

But they couldn't level it. That would be hubris. So
they left it in the middle of the world and planted grass
around it, a sea of dichondra—little tight dark green
cloverlike leaves, growing slowly
close to the ground.

Kanemoto: a tale of entreaty for this, a Surname

by Elizabyth Hiscox

i. How you found your name:

Tracing the subtle, staccato sound
gorgeous, jagged,
to sumi-ink dreamed peaks of Japan.
Slopes that scraped to heights. Climbing past
pinking blossoms,
haiku-filled forests of thin-lined pines.

ii. How I found your name:

Tracing the gorgeous, supple lines of you,
fingering the delves:
our American sonnet. Rolling in the
watercolored swath grassland:
fertile and low,
spreading fresh in the shade of lone black oaks.

iii. How I've lost your name:

Thick sweat of syllables
in my mouth.
Unable to splay the rich vowels, catch
consonants quick and salty on my tongue.
I cannot climb past.
Having breathed too deep of lows and highs,
vibratoed hills, silent trees I cannot find the air.

...not as I do

by John Pierce

Pa pointed his finger at me as though he were telling God where to strike.

I was fourteen, and starting high school in a week. I didn't particularly
like being told what to do, but I did it anyway, though not always in a way
that Pa found completely satisfying.

"Football?" I said, without much enthusiasm.

Pa slapped me to get my attention. He spoke with a hoarse, scratchy
whisper.

"You better think," He stabbed his finger at me, "before you answer."

I touched my burning face,

"When does it start?" I asked.

Pa smiled. "Tha's a good boy." He reached over and knuckled my skull.

"You're gunna to make me proud, son."

I didn't see how knocking people down could be anything to brag about. Pa
pulled out a tin of Copenhagen and put a dip of tobacco in his lower lip.
He turned away like he was done talking for the day.