‘US-400 E/US-54 E’
Kelsey Flaherty is a photographer living in Ohio. Her work has appeared in Montana Mouthful, The Sun Magazine and Great Lakes Review.
US-400 E/US-54 E
I eat a good old crispy hot dog at the bar on West A Avenue sometimes. I let the sexy middle aged gap-toothed woman slide the ketchup/mustard/relish tray over to me and I greedily toss the condiments on the dog with simple pleasure, delighting in such a classic combination. I want her approval. Two men watch me. One who is my childhood friend, one who is a pervert. They both compliment me on my ratios of ketchup/mustard/relish which then of course makes me feel huge and tall and allows me to tower over all other patrons with immense dignity and revel in queen-like superiority. The older the hot dog, the longer it has been swirling in its metal cage, the more I crave it. I will sit there with my friend and the pervert, long before ordering the hot dog, and remain distracted by its presence. Fall deeper into the dog’s temptation, dream of sinking my teeth into its fragile, old exterior. Bun not needed, though a welcome addition. I’ll order a dirty martini just to eat the olives in an attempt to distract myself, but I ever watch the rotisserie. Jealous, anticipatory of the salt and its moving body. In tents at Kingman County State Lake I’ll eat the cold hot dogs right out of the package. For this I have been judged and I don’t care. Cold dogs are reminiscent of salami, but they offer a sort of mixed refreshment. Even at room temperature they are good, no need to be cooked over a fired flame. Men don’t like when I do this and probably find themselves turned off by my impulse to eat the dogs right out of the plastic. Skinless franks fully cooked it says right there on the label. Skinless of unknown meat. My father likes peculiar meat too. He shoots squirrels with a BB gun from the sliding back porch door, but uses a 20 gauge shotgun with premium ammunition shells for quail. Catfish make good nutriment too. We don’t play picky with the types, we eat what's in abundance, what the earth has allowed us to take. I remember hitting a big buck at 21 going 45 on some dirt backed road where the corn fields touch the forest. He stretched his majestic body across my windshield and I received him. All I heard was a whoosh and a crack. When I called the cops, a redneck spawned on scene: he was listening to the police radio for calls about roadkill. The redneck and the cop carried the male deer to the truck bed and the redneck drove him home to slice and peel and cut. I can guess he made a kind of jerky with the uncrushed flesh, dried the pelt hair for a rug, drained his blood and shined the antlers for the mantle. The buck smeared guts all over the hood, hair clung to the headlights which I plucked out later with heavy gloves. I let rain take the red streaks. I wondered what a car wreck does to a body - how the impact flows, reverberates. How fast the damage registers. How the nervous system ramps and slows in shock and flight. After my Ford Focus met the animal’s meat and the quiet moment came, I sat shaking. I listened to the buck’s jagged breathing, looked straight ahead, my hands pearl white on the wheel. Did he care about his family? Does deer become car, does meat become ground? Is he lying there passing in the ditch, shaking too? I was blanketed by the stars and their oppressive feeling. I felt the broken glass under my feet. I had set my mind on the flesh and found death, so now I must lay my mind on the spirit to find peace.
Ashlyn Velasquez is a nurse and poet from a small Kansas town. She currently lives in New York, writing poetry and self publishing chapbooks with her friends. She takes inspiration from the dream-like state that rural communities are enveloped in, and the discomfort they produce.
