Five Ways to Wear the Balaclava
Rent from DeepDyve- Five Ways to Wear the Balaclava
Have you shivered? Has sleet stung your face, numbed your chapped lips? Have you wished for the fleece of the family lamb that ran wild through rows of ripening apricot trees—fleececombed by the fire, spun on the ancient wheel?
All day, the covey of mothers murmurs and casts on the ninety loose stitches, singing the oldest songs as they loop the wool double-rib (knit two, purl two), making a helmet of wool to shieldyour face from invading cold. At the door, you
pause before boarding. Into your kit she tucks the color of pine forests at dusk, the new balaclava. (Knit to protect the neck's nape, the ear's exposed swerve, cheeks your mamulya kissed when she savedyou from a child’s fall, folded you in her heart.)
While the train's uproar fades into the steppe, she thinks of ways you will wear it: cap to cover your head's crown, flesh over bone. As a folded scarf to caress your neck, warm the apple of Adamstuck in your throat. She imagines your convoy
paused at the border, late snow lashing you as you cross into Slavyansk, Sevastopol, Balaklava— how you will pull up her knitting to shield your head. But you know also the two other ways toshape this cap. When under the not-moon the you [End Page 62]
and you creep into the town now held by what they have said are rebels—tug the dark fabric up to cover your mouth. Now, who could swear to who you might be? Who can say how your teethgleam like wild dogs’ as you flick off the safety?
Or, better, pull higher the cover your mother has knit out of her heart: even the shape of your nose might give you away. Only the eyes, which some may hold are the soul’s windows, only the eyesare exposed. Eyes frozen as stones in a deep
winter pond. Now anonymous, you may stalk each terrified street, swagger the scope past shattered glass, across broken monuments. Sleek as a tank, you swivel for barricade, spot young fool-hardy hands wrapped around a lit Molotov. Smash
in a suspect door, swing the gun hard before you— in this broken-open room, a woman, a fire, a stool, a glint in her lap. Her panicky hands drop the needles, the half-ribbed hat. The wool at her feet is the colorof pine. Color of iron. Color of blood. [End Page 63]
Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in Bellingham Review, Cimarron Review, Measure, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Cave Wall, among other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies. Her first collection, Passion, received the Oregon Book Award for poetry. Her second collection, Red Jess, and third, Pulse and Constellation, followed. ‘‘Five Ways to Wear the Balaclava’’ is part of a new manuscript, ‘‘Cicatrix.’’
