The Jockey

Dust whorls above splintered grandstands as Clyde, a sinewy stable-rat with sun-cracked knuckles, trades his curry-comb for silks when foreclosure threatens the clapboard cottage of Lois, the only woman who ever saw poetry in the ammonia reek of a feed room. A last-chance wager is stapled to the withers of a fire-breathing mare whose pulse drums like a war canoe; Clyde must outrun bookies, jealous jockeys, and the spectral memory of a father who died in the stirrups. Between the seventh furlong and the finish line, the racetrack mutates into a fever dream of hoof-beats, slot machines, and mortgage papers fluttering like losing tickets. When the final photo flashes, love itself is weighed in the balance against winner’s-circle roses, and the difference between ruin and redemption is measured in the width of a horse’s nostril.