Unaccompanied/Verging Cities

In Unaccompanied Javier Zamora uses different structuring in his poems to communicate to the reader. There are poems that completely lack punctuation and/or capital letters, compelling the reader to move on the page without hesitation blending words and sentences into one complete thought, leaving the reader breathless by the end of the poem. These poems left me breathless and at times in tears. I connected with my own losses, the people I have had to leave behind in my life and I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the poet's journey and his losses. He commanded my attention and my ear, he demanded I witness, and not look away and I obliged. Zamora masterfully used only line breaks to push us forward to the next sentence on the page, as in "Citizenship,"

"it was clear they were hungry
with their carts empty the clothes inside their empty hands

they were hungry because their hands
were empty their hands in trashcans

the trashcans on the street
the asphalt street on the red dirt the dirt taxpayers pay for

up to that invisible line visible thick white paint
visible booths visible with the fence starting from the booths

booth road booth road booth road office building then the fence
fence fence fence..." (63).

Words laid on a page without punctuation, repetitive words, take on a frenetic pacing, an urgency with no punctuation to tell us when and where to stop, pause, breathe. Sectioned off by the structure of couplets that connect one to the other depending on where the reader chooses to make that break or that connection. Zamora opens his palm and dribbles the words onto our laps, spills them like sand through the narrow waist of an hourglass. We pick up on his urgency, his confusion and it is this, not the pause and emphasis of punctuation and line breaks that give meaning and importance to his words.
Doctor's Office First Week in this Country and June 10, 1999 also have no punctuation, the latter being a poem of the poet's journey to and his experience in America, each section marked by a Roman numeral 1, or is it I, the I of the experience, the poet himself bringing the reader in close,

"I.

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...

told me     we want you
out out out out" (87).

Questions asked in the poem without a question mark appear as a statement and force the reader to not answer but accept it as statement, as truth; the eye being trained to look for a question mark as a cue that an answer is expected. In this poem and answer is not wanted, as the poet writes he is not wanted.

In Verging Cities Natalie Scenters-Zapico talks about the body as language, the body as archive, the archive as geography, geography as woman: all borderless and bordered within the same spatial and temporal frame. In "The Verging Cities," Zapico tells us,

"I dreamed your body a verge marked in
deep lines-
border of our extremities.
2.
I am the city that's come to swallow
the plastic bags of your body. I have
seen

you sit in parking lots, whispering of
light
and the smoke that rises from me.

Because you think me a woman, you
think me
beautiful, but we are of the same
concrete" (491).

Zapico is placed within the borders of both cities, a figure eight on its side, infinity, eternally looping back and forth between the two sisters, until they verge into one and they are only recognizable through body memory that never goes away,

"...Even Angel's grandfather
has come to tell stories of how

he died on the wrong side of the border.
He wants us to understand why he
stayed
in the U.S. alive, and how he hates

this city's Christmas-lit star and how
he'd prefer the white rocks of its sister" (588).

The heart stays in Juarez but the body seeks the soil of perceived safety. The soil that holds much more treachery whereas the soil of home remains the first love,

"So when I find

your body naked, your skull cracked
in shards across the tar, I take
my clothes off and cover you.
You whisper: I can't die here, I wanted

to fall on the live side of the border.
And I know it isn't your voice
I'm hearing but I take your severed
hands
and carry them across to Juarez anyway (448).

The soul seeks the home where it knows its origins, regardless of the geography of birth and body.