JAMES VALVIS

Segue 10: Fall 11

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Segue 10: Fall 11

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CONTENTS

Here in America 4 Burn Bag 5 Author Notes 6

Segue 10: Fall 11

James Valvis 4

Here in America

The elderly Jewish man, survivor of the Holocaust, waddles to the hot tub, his feet so swollen it’s like he’s walking on bowling pins. His hair is sparse from chemotherapy, belly bloated as if he swallowed a beach ball like the one my wife and daughter are playing with on this ordinary day. I’m sitting at the table, reading Ploughshares. He smiles at me, gives a little salute. We’re friends in that way strangers are friends after they’ve seen each other over many years. Grabbing the metal bar, arms doing all the work, he lowers himself in the hot water, one slow painful step and then another, until at last he can rest inside the warm water that brings him partial relief of pain that never ends. His ancestors once helped put my savior on the cross. My ancestors once put his family in ovens. But he calls across the pool to my daughter by name and asks how school is going. And when he wants the jets on in the hot tub I set aside my magazine and turn the dial for him. Now that I think of it, here in America, there’s no such thing as an ordinary day.

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James Valvis 5

Burn Bag A burn bag is a bag into which secret documents are placed for disposal. Like the body into which the secrets of the spirit are written. All language is but scraps from the documents of our souls. Most of who we are remains in the bag, awaiting the struck match.

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James Valvis 6

Author Notes James Valvis lives in Washington State. His work has recently appeared in Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, Blip (Mississippi Review), Eclectica, Foundling Review, Rattle, River Styx, and is forthcoming in Pedestal Magazine, H_NGM_N, Hanging Loose, GW Review, New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Night Train, Verdad, and others. His full-length poetry collection, How to Say Goodbye, is forthcoming.