(Poem) Guerilla Knitters by Mary Saracino

They wield their pointed needles 
not as weapons of terror 
flung at airline pilots or fellow passengers, 
but as benevolent batons in the hands of a maestro, 
to orchestrate the American right of dissent.

They unleash their finest tools — 
piercing intelligence, keen tongues — 
for forays into enemy territory, 
waging verbal skirmishes against 
the deluge of American policies run amok —
unfair immigration laws, defense of marriage acts, 
the bombing of innocents to satisfy
our country’s insatiable lust for SUV fuel,
no matter how high the cost in lives, 
civilians or soldiers—theirs or ours.

Not gray-haired biddies cackling on.  
They don’t rock away in rickety old chairs
spinning lovely scarves and lonely yarns 
about lost chances, spent youth.
These guerrillas rile the air at corner coffee shops 
where they gather each week
to knit and raise ruckus. 

They sip hot coffee, tea with milk, 
munch on scones or home-made cake,
smuggled beneath skeins of yarn, extra needles, 
a sweater pattern or two. 
They fill the spaces between knit and purl 
with pearls of fervent conviction
positing the off-center point-of-view, 
counter-point arguments 
the likes of which are proffered on TV, 
in newspapers, at the grocery store, 
on the bus, in the marbled halls of Congress.

They stray far from the middle, 
these middle-aged knitters.
Bold and with eloquence, they seek 
nothing less than an unraveling,
when their stitches falter, 
for they’ve learned the hard way 
that some stitches fail to cohere 
into a workable pattern;
some projects are best unraveled 
and cast anew with different yard. 

They seek nothing more than to re-assemble 
an America of texture and color as difficult, 
intricate and lovely 
as the Fair Isle masterpieces that evolve, 
row by beautiful row, 
from their astute guerrilla minds.

Author's Note: This poem was written for the women in the Denver knitting circle group I belonged to when I lived in that city.

This poem was published in Motherlines (Pearlsong Press, 2026)
 

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