It’s like I told the firefighters— 

when my lover left, my pitchfork transformed 

into a stack of sugar cubes, bringing out the horses 

from pasture’s edge, who munched up the pitchfork pieces, 

one accidentally snapping off my white right thumb, 

which led me to seek revenge, and I’d heard once 

about the dangers of horse racing on the horses, 

so I used my nine good fingers to construct a copy 

of Churchill Downs in the pasture, complete with 

well-made mint juleps and performance-enhancing drugs 

injected into the same horses which had previously 

eaten my pitchfork-turned-sugar-cubes and also 

my right thumb, drugs which sped their hearts 

to dangerous beats-per-minute paces, 

and watchers flocked from all over 

once my flyers were dropped from the crop duster 

over the entirety of Kentucky, and the real Churchill 

owners threatened to sue, so I named the venue 

Durchill Chowns, which left me scot-free, 

and I named the horse race The Other Kentucky Derby, 

so on the third Sunday of May I held the race, 

at which I waved a flag with my four-finger grip, 

and where I learned the track was far too short 

for all those horses, the drugs in their system turning 

their hooves into burning rubber, but literally, 

they began literally burning, smoke billowing from the trails 

they carved into the earth, round and around they continued to run 

until one caught fire, then the rest, six fire-dressed stallions, 

it might’ve been the drugs, it might’ve been the pitchfork, 

but either way they took off, gaining so much momentum 

they took flight, their shredded legs sprinting on air, 

slowly becoming a ball of light in the distance, meanwhile 

the stands around me burnt, flames licked at the white wood 

like a tongue against a sugar cube, the splintering 

of collapse all around not unlike the door closing 

when I saw my lover the last time, all of which 

I told the firefighters who said this tale was as old 

as love itself, and left while the burning kept on.