The Red Hot Dogs From North Dakota

Before I put my phone in airplane

mode, my mother texts

You know they’re sold 

at Seattle Mariners games

always reminding me of my home 

state’s claims to fame: low

living costs, Lawrence Welk, liberty

of unlocked doors. Sameness 

equals safety.



My mother 

did not know what a Seattle Mariner 

was until the baseball team 

started selling Cloverdale

Meat’s fuschia franks, a cheerleader

for locally manufactured mishmash.

To me,

the map to my origin

is mile-marked with monotony,

summer concerts in wheat fields, 

bonfire blonds drinking 

pro-life pilsners to death. 

The same local cheerleaders 

I could never pyramid. 

But my mother and I, 

we are both 

romantics. 

She wraps 

herself in a fuzzy comforter 

of familiarity.

I drool

on Delta fleece,

then text selfies 4,800 

miles away,

biting into a spicy mustard

street weinerwurst under a neon

-lit midnight, standing sandwiched 

between an art gallery and neo 

renaissance opera house 

commissioned by a 19th century 

emperor in Vienna, the city

that rebirthed hot dogs.