Regrettable?

Hollow tip bullets make awkward Christmas presents

This line may refer back to the previous stanza–asking whiter the substitutes (a staple, a champagne flute) are actually better alternatives

It also refers to mundane butter subs like I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter!

Lerner expands these gestures, that ask the reader to imply connections between disconnected phrases, in his third book Mean Free Path, c.f.:

I organized, distributed fliers like
This one

goes out to all
My people were
possible worlds, encouraging

from “Doppler Elegies”

Mundane items that have a close relationship to exciting/expensive items:

The “champagne flute” is celebratory, like champagne itself

A staple literally conjoins while a wedding ring conjoins two people for the rest of their lives..

A dialectician goes from the first idea to the second idea and creates a sort of synthesis between them. During a wedding a priest ask the bride and then the groom until they are both married

Lupe kills the beat (track) like folk hero John Henry hits the railroad track

A play on the Little Engine That Could

Back to the boxing metaphor and referencing the classic Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls

From physical distance to chronological distance and, now, a mixture of the two (along with technological distance).

The TGV is an awesome high speed rail train in France, the Chicago Red-Line train is a slower, heavy rail train (it’s charming, though!)

France and Chicago are far from each other, the TGV is newer than the old-school Red-Line and the TGV is more state-of-the art, too. Still, Lupe transcends!