Reem Hazboun Taşyakan
Gather & Scatter
to my mother
Your box of scarves arrived today / A whole box full of scarves
they casually tossed in a cardboard hollow like used tissues in a wastepaper basket
Your box of scarves arrived today / A whole life full of scarves
you carefully stored in a cedar wood armoire like souvenirs in stickered suitcases
Keepsakes selected with discerning taste,
laid upon your olive-nourished hair,
tied around your amber-scented neck,
in cotton-satin-silk-chiffon one pashmina
florals-checkers-stripes-and-dots some kuffiyehs
Gifts purchased on zigzag journeys from Siberia
to Italia falasṭeen to al‘urdun sa’udeeyah
to Pennsylvania New York to Arizona
to Memory Care but there’s no armoire
there it’s care for the memory-failing,
not care for the memories fleeing
the home of your mind
Your fabric mementos were shipped to me cloths you carried through war and conflict
collected through distress and unrest while ailing and healing losing and gaining
teaching learning forgetting routines and days and names your ways yourself
Your box of scarves arrived / A whole heart full of remembrance
willfully gathered in soundness unwittingly scattered by illness
I don’t wear them, or store them, just clutch, billow, and fold them
Still scents of cedar and amber upon them that will fade away
but not today
Reem Hazboun Taşyakan is a PhD candidate in the Literature Department at University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation examines socio-political themes in 21st c. Arab American novels. She obtained her BA in Creative Writing and her MA in Near Eastern Studies from University of Arizona, then worked as a lecturer of Arab literature and culture prior to beginning her doctoral studies. Reem’s fiction has appeared in Eclectica and Kweli, and her poetry has appeared in Other People and Grist. Her critical article on the polyphonic Arab American novel was published in Arab Studies Quarterly’s Spring 2024 issue.