For Stephanie

Bar Scene Minneapolis: The Hat in the Corner

Not everyone can pull that off,
but you make wearing hats
look good again.
Maybe it is the symmetries
of facial geometry—a
curved brim parallel to the taught jaw—
there is a nostalgic appeal
to the workaday look of 1953,
particularly in these days
of manicured ruffians and
mass-marketed hoodlums.
Or maybe it is the rumpled quality
that draws me in:
tendrils of dark hair escaping
the fabric’s cockeyed slant.
What I like most, however,
is the way the hat shelters
your dark eyes,
winking and mischievous,
until you look up,
laughing riotously at a joke
so inappropriate that it was whispered
behind a swaying fist and a sweating bar glass,
punching the air with exclamations
of “you can’t, you didn’t”
and “again.”