Brass Knuckle Belt Buckle

for KAR

Because one never knows when
brass knuckles are called-for
and so like a good boy scout
one prepares for brass knuckle

weather and the way pants
must be disciplined into staying
on the body. Not so with love, Friend.
Or so I thought, I said over chocolate

ice cream and coffee that we'd ordered
at a place one goes to eat cucumber
cayenne yogurt, Thai chili peanut ice cream,
berry bergamot or goats milk lingonberry.

A shop about novelty, fleeting sweetnesses
various, while we, two devotees who ordered
for loyalty off the menu and pondered
the fickleness of love, the way someone

walks out the door in figurative brass knuckles
and someone waits to feel the blows and that it
should only be summer frozen on a stick, a plan
to build birdhouses, to find music in the deliberate

songlessness of certain songbooks, a way to fly north
and not worry at which weapons get declared, stored
and which should be worn.