The Verging Cities (Updated with Unaccompanied)

A lot of Scenters-Zapico's poetry focused on borders (both tangible and metaphorical), division, violence, and the body. One thing that stood out to me immediately was her own splitting tactics as she uses the slash mark in her title of the poem Con/verge. She also splits the language and utilizes both English and Spanish, which flows throughout her work as well.  

She distinctly uses a lot of wording that paints this picture of a division amongst not just these adjacent cities; but people, different points of view, and so on. Although these cities are bordered, they are still connected. We wonder how two cities are split, how they swell. Watch how they collide. Not only are these places still connected however, she makes a point to remind that these invisible lines do not really exist. They’re imaginary. Simply because one has claimed territory of a certain area doesn’t make it any more theirs or any less someone else’s. 

What lie to divide land in lines that don’t exist, to attempt to leave the body on a dark, studded night. 

Ultimately, Scenters-Zapico touches on this looming story of colonization in When The Desert Made Us Visible: 

They believe they are the first ones 

to discover desert. 

As though, in discovering desert, they could 

populate it with trees 

and dark mosses. 

And she finishes off this piece by writing: 

I forgive the traveler. 

You are the darkest places 

of sparse and perfect language. 

You are the darkest places 

in the cloud’s shadow. 

Which I feel is her way of saying I may forgive you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a horrible human being. I also like how she doesn’t give the traveler a “you didn’t know any better” like most people will attest in order to excuse white people doing white things. 

One last thing I also appreciated in her work was the title usage. She would reuse the title and change a word and completely change the meaning or the feeling. Con/verge, Re/merge, Di/verge. There was also When The Desert Made Us Visible and When The Desert Made Us Invisible and The City Is A Body Swallowed and The City Is A Body Broken. 

Furthermore, Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora offers a lot of overlapping themes with The Verging Cities. Each of these books talk about the heartache and painstaking journey of crossing the border. This worry of losing people you care about and the fear brought about by border patrol. They also both talk of the desert and the lack of water.

Dancing in Buses was one of the poems I really wanted to highlight for its line dance type layout that mirrors something like the Cha Cha Slide and gives a heavy topic a very light and accessible feel. The last stanza: 

Hands behind your head. 
Drop down. 
Look at the ground. 
Roll over. 
Face the mouth of the barrel. 
Do the protect-face-with-hand.
Don't scream.

snaps you back to reality that this isn't all fun and games, at any minute someone could lose their life.

Another mutual theme the two books had was this being "othered" sense. Knowing you weren't a citizen of this country, maybe you were undocumented, called an "alien," but they knew just as well they were fighting for a better life. Although they were escaping the conditions they were already in they found a new hardship in possibly being caught.

I wasn’t born here / I’ve always known this country wanted me dead / do you believe me when I say more than once / a white man wanted me dead / a white man passed a bill that wants me deported / wants my family deported / a white man a white man a white man  / not the song I wanted to hear / driving to the airport today / the road the trees the signs the sky the cars the walls the lights / told me we want you / out out out out

This stanza from June 10, 1999 was probably the most heart-wrenching of them all, especially knowing it could be applied to either book and any person that has come here "illegally." As someone once said, "No one is illegal on stolen land."