Maryann Corbett

Seeing Women in Hijab, A Businesswoman
Thinks about Fabric

The veils themselves are beautiful, no question,
and in this neighborhood they wear them long.
Fluidly draped, rich-textured, and in colors
I’d hesitate to choose for business wear,
they smooth all movement, turning simple moves,
like walking, sitting, lifting an arm, to art.
A hem off-kilter sometimes says home-sewn.
I notice, and think of how I used to sew.
In fact, I still waste time in fabric stores,
modest ones in the Midway, the very same
stores where Somali women shop for veiling.
I haunt the aisles of  “special occasion” fabric,
drinking the varied hues and saturations —
aquamarine and celadon, wine, plum.
Evening wear was what I loved to sew,
“evening and bridal” in the pattern books.
Dances and proms and weddings, so much sewing —
But the thrill was never only the finished dress.
The thrill was the fabric — satin, crepe de chine,
silk doupioni, taffeta, organza —
the uncut rivers running off the bolt.
Roll out a bolt of velvet, you’re transformed
to oriental empress. Cut it up
in little pieces for constructed garments,
you’re right back to your wage-slave weekday role.
The clothes approved for Western working life
fit closely. They have no extraneous drape,
no flow, nothing to veil the daily grind.
The clothes that let you love the cloth itself —
brocaded stiffness, nuzzling velveteen,
bias-cut satin pouring over a thigh —
are evening and bridal wear, or period costumes,
with bodices and corsets that grip the waist
above a gathered skirt that opens softly
like an enormous rose, the dress of dreams,
the fabric of fantasy, like nothing at all
I wear these days, life being what it is.
The dream needs yards of fabric, like those veils.
Which brings me back to the stabbing little needles
of my questioning, when a Muslim woman’s veil
brushes me as she passes in the aisle
of the 16A, as all of us ride downtown
to weekdays that are not the lives we dreamed.

Companion Piece — Blank Verse and Blinders

I’ve written quite a few poems that are fairly long, in loose iambics and a discursive voice. These poems often feature a narrator whose opinions are cynical and whose viewpoint is noticeably blinkered or limited. Three of them will be published this summer (here in SCR, in poemeleon, and in Mezzo Cammin), and readers may notice that the “I” they encounter in them has an assortment of unlikeable traits. Lest I be confused with my narrators and look even sillier than I am, I’d better explain how this habit of mine got started...