Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Writing Competition
by Sandra Sylvia Nelson
reminder of your love for me—gone cold, or perhaps it was hot when you’d tossed it up at my window, bouncing soundlessly off the glass, rolling to where it stopped under the overhanging branches of the cedar, where it hardening into Satan’s frozen love-sickle, and I am reminded of when you once said to me, “It’s like a hotdog in a tunnel.”
I walk away from the window and upon returning the fleshy-pink hotdog looks up at me and I feel for it—alone and cold knowing I could warm it if I wanted, and you had told me I could use a dildo, but a frozen hotdog is no dildo—only dildo shaped, and I am reminded of a man who tried to put a warmed tubular light bulb into me and I’d said, “Get that out of there.”
If the hotdog is a valentine—a kind of love poem meant to prolong my longing for you—what do I throw on your roof: a dried pear, apple or apricot, a Judy Chicago luncheon plate, a Georgia O’Keeffe flower’s throat?
When my boyfriend was in jail again he wrote: guys in here use a toilet paper tube wrapped in a warm wet washcloth—inferring this is my replacement—and on my grave will be written: better that a toilet paper tube wrapped in a washrag.
Right now I’m not in the mood for laughs and I don’t want the hotdog out there as a phallic reminder of what I’m not getting—instead I’d rather a rabid raccoon take it away in its sharp teeth.
Still, if the hotdog were presented to me in a more formal way, say in a box on a bed of hair, I might get the metaphor, or if it had a ring slid around it like the cock rings gay bikers wear on their leather shoulder straps I’d get the meaning, but this frozen hotdog sitting in a bed of cedar needles makes me think of pain and sadism—making me nervous and confused—so call me and let me know what your hotdog thinks about all this.
Sandra Sylvia Nelson has had work in many magazines including: The Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Razor, Electric Literature, The Iowa Review, Ms. Magazine, Hard Choices an anthology by The Iowa Review and in the textbook Exploring Literature.
Photo by Egor Litvinov on Unsplash
