The Red Sweater

In “The Red Sweater” time is, quite literally, a commodity. The speaker looks at the piece of clothing on his body and slows down to consider what it cost. The poem never mentions a specific dollar figure, however. Instead, the speaker says, “for me / to have it my mother worked twenty / hours at the fast-food joint” (Lines 3-5). He is wearing his mother’s time and effort.

In the weave of the sweater, the speaker sees her at work and breaks the time down into other metrics. “In a twenty hour period my mother waits / on hundreds of customers” (Lines 11-12) and “pushes / each order under ninety seconds” (Lines 12-13). Her time at work is not idle—almost every second seems to be counted and given to the company.

The poem talks about prep time, “the lull before rush hours” (Line 15) when the re-fried beans are mashed. In the longest line of the poem that seems to mimic the length of the day, he asks, “How many burritos can one make in a continuous day?” (Line 18). Her days are measured by how much product she moves, the pounds of ingredients she processes, the items she cooks.