The Year of Cowardice 

Kathleen Levitt

On the phone my brother loses the farm. The desert spreads wide around him. On the phone I’ll be in the desert in two days, in two days I arrive in the desert. Darkness. I stand outside that flattened airport smoking cigarette after cigarette like it’s four years ago and I’m dying to see you. I’m smoking myself to death to touch you. Two hours and my brother’s truck pulls up. Dogs skidding in the bed. And driving out into the land the openness is still and chirping. Like this is the year I meet you. The year that terrible man comes to power and my brother teaches me to shoot. Drunk on old tequila with one earplug between us, it’s the year I leave my life in the city. The year of the desert. The year the grass rises high around us. The year you walk towards me, I walk towards you through those stretched endless fields, forever and ever approaching. It’s the year of the crows. The year we lie in the dirt in the dry field with the world caught in the radio between us. The year we lie on top of the trailer and you tell me about your sister. The bad years. All stars and black up above and this wet-wooded feeling between us. The year we have to put our faces so close to the coals to blow some life into the thing I think our mouths will catch fire. The year my brother and I stand in old jackets in the unheated shop and watch on a small screen as the votes come in. The year you press my hands between your thighs to get warm. The year the women run and hide. The year I bleed out your attempted kid into a hole I carve in the dirt. The year that rogue coyote eats that kid out of that hole I carve in the dirt. That dirt gets washed away. It’s the year the monsoons come. They come every year. This year they come especially. The year we scar up our hands processing chickens in those storms. Afternoon. Bright grey light and the dogs lapping up the innards we throw in the gravel. We peel stones out of those birds’ stomachs—were those the hearts? The rest of the year goes on. You almost leave the desert. I almost leave the desert. That year we stay in the desert. That year I almost get suctioned into that drain pipe at the end of the irrigation ditch, swimming. Your legs clamp my leg in your legs. It’s the year of the current. The year of the news. The year we race barefoot on the stone to bleeding. The year of no calluses, some calluses. The year the internet cuts out, the radio fuzzes over. The year we’re safe in the dirt, safe on the mesa—are we safe? Flames lapping out of the oil drums. Forestfires smoking up the basin. It’s the year of the protests. Riots they’re called. Far away, the cities lighting up. The year of bricks. The year of the sky, big as a palm weighing you down in that sunk field. God’s gone, it’s the year of the drought. The year of music, no music. The year the good dog dies. That far tree falls. The neighbor shoots himself in the head with a rifle. My brother hears the sound. That year the mesa is a globe. That year the roads wash out. The roads crack up. It’s the year of the frost. The year of the markets. The year of no profits. The year we fuck in the neighbor’s hay loft, fucking up some barter. The year I lie in the dark with the gun beneath the bed and pull the dog on top of me to weigh me down. I don’t want those rights. That year everyone wants those rights. It’s the year of lying. The year of suns rising, going down. The year of you dressing me. On your knees before me with your stern mouth and mother’s hands, dressing me. The year we drive so fast over black ice through that mountain pass and almost, we tip. We grab each other and almost. We don’t that year. That year we climb into the loft of that a-frame and touch each other under those eaves like we know you’ll be dead in a year. I bleed a lot. You wash my hair in the shower that year. Everything so tender. So far off. Standing in the mirror brushing each other’s teeth, that year it’s Christmas. We’re children. We turn up the road. The blinker chiming. Would if you were to walk out of that pitch.

Kathleen Levitt earned her MFA from Portland State University. Her work has appeared in “The Writer,” “34th Parallel,” “The Unwinnable,” and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Art: Margo Hoover is an artist and teacher based in Oakland. She paints with bright colors that combine personal symbolism with religious and mystic iconography. You can learn more about her work at margoisbusy.art