The Red Sweater

The poem begins by stitching the title, “The Red Sweater” to the first line of the poem, “slides down into my body, soft” (Line 1). The title is required for the line to make sense. The move is the first reinforcement of the sweater’s complexity and its centrality to the poem.

There is a sweetness to the poem’s emotional tenor at this point. It appears in the passive construction of the opening phrase “slides down into my body” (Line 1). The speaker does not put on the garment, it slides on him. The choice may conjure early memories of being dressed by a parent—a child stretches out their arms, the parent slips on a garment and gently tugs it down. The image evokes feelings of being cared for. It is like the texture of the sweater itself: “soft / lambs wool” (Lines 1-2).

The word choice of “into” rather than “onto” in the first line, “slides down into my body” shows the sweater is simultaneously a concrete detail and something more than a simple piece of clothing. The sweater is a need, a comfort, and it is something that becomes a part of him.

The second section of the first full sentence (Lines 1-5) says the sweater is “what everybody / is wearing” (Lines 2-3). It functions as a signifier for the speaker’s public identity. Wearing the sweater signals he belongs in the group—of friends, a class, a school, a city, and a country.

The final part of the opening articulates a key question in the poem: what does the sweater cost? The speaker follows with the answer and reveals that “for me / to have it my mother worked twenty hours at the fast-food joint” (Lines 3-5).

The sweater is not a throwaway item, taken for granted, or put on without a second thought. The working-class speaker knows enough to count its purchase in work hours. The sweater, in this way, relates to the speaker’s private, familial identity as much as it does to his public persona.

The second sentence marks a change in tone, taking it out of the territory of childhood nostalgia. The imagery turns sensual when the sweater’s fit is compared to a lover, “sleeves snug, thin on the waist” (Lines 6-7). The line is an expression of a more mature appreciation for the quality of the item. The sweater’s yarn is “lambs wool” (Line 2) and it is well made—both practical and aesthetically pleasing. The speaker revels in wearing something so perfect for him. But even as he luxuriates in it and runs his “fingers through the knit” (Line 8), his mind drifts back to what it cost.

The poem does not take on a guilty tone; instead, it slows to acknowledge and honor the specifics of his mother’s work. He sees her “over the hot oil in the fryers / dipping a strainer full of stringed potatoes” (Lines 9-10). He thinks about the “hundreds of customers” (Line 12) she waits on in the twenty-hour period it took to earn the money for the sweater. Each of those hundreds of orders takes “under ninety seconds” (Line 13). She “slaps / the refried beans she mashed during prep time, / the lull before rush hours, onto steamed tortillas” (Lines 13-15). It is hard, uncomfortable labor, with “the room’s pressing heat melting her make-up” (Line 16).

The unglamorous reality of her job stands in contrast to the red sweater, but its wearer does not shy away from the truth of it. “Every clean strand of weave becomes a question” (Line 17), he says as he examines the sweater. The inquiry begins by wondering how many burritos can be made in a day (Line 18) and how many pounds of vegetables are prepped to make them? (Line 19). It ends with the speaker connecting the volume of ingredients with his mother’s body: “How do her wrists / sustain the scraping, lifting, and flipping / of meat patties?” (Lines 20-22).

His mother’s job is taxing and repetitive. The sweater cost twenty hours of that kind of labor and those twenty hours “are merely links / in the chain of days startlingly similar” (Lines 23-24). The grind does not end with the purchase of one item.

His mother’s days begin in the early hours, “the blue morning” (Line 25), when she puts on her “polyester uniform” (Line 26). The garment, made of synthetic materials rather than natural lambswool, stands in contrast to the luxury of the red sweater. The uniform, “even when it’s newly-washed, smells / of mashed beans and cooked ground beef” (Lines 27-28), indicating that  the job is carried home with her. A symbol of her sacrifice, the mother’s work to secure her son’s place and well-being is carried in the sweater he wears.