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The Horses Run Back to Their Stalls by Linda Gregerson

It's another sorry tale about class in America, I'm sure
              you're right,
      but you have to imagine how proud we were.

Your grandfather painted a banner that hung from Wascher's
              Pub
      to Dianis's Grocery across the street: Reigh Count,

Kentucky Derby Winner, 1928.
              And washtubs filled
      with French champagne. I was far too young

to be up at the stables myself, of course, it took
              me years
      to understand they must have meant in bottles

in the washtubs, with ice.
              His racing colors
      were yellow and black, like the yellow

cabs, which is how Mr. Hertz first made the money
              that built
      the barns that bred the horses, bred at last this perfect

horse, our hundred and thirty seconds of flat-out earth-
              borne bliss.
      They bought the Arlington Racetrack then, and Jens

got a job that for once in his life allowed him to pay
              the mortgage
      and the doctors too, but he talked the loose way even

good men talk sometimes, and old man Hertz
              was obliged
      to let him go. It was August when the cab strike in

Chicago got so ugly. Somebody must have tipped
              them off,
      since we learned later on that the Count

and the trainer who slept in his stall had been moved
              to another
      barn. I'll never forget the morning after: ash

in the air all the way to town, and the smell of those
              poor animals,
      who'd never harmed a soul. There's a nursery

rhyme that goes like that, isn't there? Never
              did us any
      harm. I think it's about tormenting a cat.