Here is the space to share written explications of Zamora’s poems and to continue our conversation from class.
Since we discussed the importance of hearing poems read aloud, I thought you might enjoy this recording of Zamora reading “Saguaros”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8bzOJcxXtE
In the beginning of the poem “Second Attempt Crossing” by Javier Zamora, the language paints the picture of a southwestern landscape filled with words of nature. They are “in the middle of that desert” that is not barren and only filled with “sand/ and sand only”, but surrounded by “those acacias, whiptails, and/ coyotes”. Here Zamora doesn’t begin the poem in a dark sense, as one would expect from a poem titled so ominously “Second Attempt Crossing” — an obvious reference to crossing the border into America which is fraught with danger and peril. Instead he puts the reader amidst beauty, stressing such beauty with the repetition of “in the middle of that” in line 1, “in the middle of those” in line 4, and finally “in that” in line 7. Each of these preparatory phrases are followed by a scene of nature. Additionally, the rest of the first stanza other than these lines are indented, bringing further attention to these similarities.
Zamora continues the nature scenery in the second stanza, detailing birds and cactuses native to the land. We are not in an inhabitable desert, and the juxtaposition of this comfort and the reality of what is about to be done stands out in a stark manner. He then blends the line between animal and human in line 12, “against the herd of legs”. This line is grammatically connected with the poem transitioning from nature towards Chino, the narrator’s subject in this poem, but structurally it is connected to the nature imagery. These 40 people who are running from the border patrol are transformed into a herd of animals. This metaphor is connected with animalistic instincts, of following the pack, of lacking in thought.
But Chino is running against the pack, underlining his humanity. It is also in the break of a new stanza that he breaks the herd, breaks the animal to run back to Zamora and protect him. And yet Chino is not completely an exception to the symbolism present. In line 9 he is established as part of the natural scene here, “and you flew from my side in the dirt.” There’s a few things to unpack in the line — the physical lifting of Chino as he flies, metaphorically relating him to themes of angels and/or freedom, the connection back to nature as he is turned into a bird, and the position of Zamora in the dirt, trapped on earth and being left behind.
The switch from nature to Chino lies above the underlying man versus nature theme that is brought about at this point in the poem (with the caveat of Chino’s humanity representing empathy, rather than the cruelty associated with the “man”). Who are we as a reader rooting for here? We want the “herd” to get away from La Migra, we hate the white trucks and “the gun/ ready to press its index” (lines 16-17). The whole book creates an incredible empathy for the migrant, so they are our natural ally in this poem. This, coupled with the calming natural symbolism, pits the reader against the border patrol that is interrupting the desert dawn with their violence and machinery.
This theme continues through the end of the poem. In the final stanza Zamora lists all of the physical, man-made locations that he and Chino were split up. With the repetition of Virginia, San Francisco, San Salvador, and Alexandria, we are reminded in this, the saddest of stanzas where Chino is murdered, that it is these cities and the gang politics related to them that is the reason for his death. This especially when Zamora opens the final stanzas of the poem with “Beautiful Chino” in line 22, connecting back with the sun dawning beautifully in the second stanza and that nature/goodness theme. Repetition is also used in line 25 to drill in Chino’s tattoo of MS13, the most prominent gang in the El Salvadorian gang wars that initiated the migration north to America. This, written elsewhere in the book as well, is yet another corruption of man that the poem brings to light — all the more eloquently so, because it was this tattoo that Zamora sheltered under in line 20, “pushed me under your chest”. Zamora is pressed against the warfare that MS13 represents, even as he attempts to escape it.
Sammy Dubner
9/11/2018
Professor Cassarino
Border Narratives
While Javier Zamora’s poem “Exiliados” narrates a date with a fellow immigrant, the diction and the imagery employed throughout provide this poem with a much more violent and forlorn tone overall. The poem is imbued with a negative spin from the very outset. In the opening triplet, Zamora frames the speaker’s experience with this significant other in a negative light, commenting upon what they “didn’t hold” in their hands. Moreover, the image of holding “typhoons or tropics” is somewhat curious. This can be interpreted in several ways. Looking at the word “typhoon,” it is clearly a destructive force of immense power, but these two would, presumably, be able to control it. “Tropics,” on the other hand is associated with a sort of beauty, peace, and purity. However, when these two words are taken in context together, it becomes more apparent that these two are foreign in the US and can be seen as describing the both seductive yet destructive aspects of being marked as a foreigner. In the following line of the first stanza, the speaker goes on to note how he “didn’t reach across the table,” yet again framing their experience together through what did not happen, as opposed to their actual experience.
As the poem progresses into the second triplet, Zamora’s fascination with hands continues with his description of how his “fist were old tennis balls thrown to the stray dog of love.” This line is incredibly beautiful and lyrical when read aloud, but upon further investigation feels much darker. “Fist” is often times associated with violence, and reveals a hidden tension within the speaker, while “old tennis balls” creates an image of something that is worn out, beyond useful; these two images help to further convey the sense of tension in their date, as well as to introduce a new idea of helplessness, and the sense that one has been used. However, it is interesting to note that these beat up things are valued by the forgotten, or “the stray dog,” of society.
The form of the poem, not so much in the line breaks or the spacing, but in the actual structure and development of the narrative, becomes important to examine as we move into the final three stanzas. The last three triplets before the final couplet seem to eschew the beautiful lyricism and vivid and, at times, off-putting imagery of the first two. It is almost as though Zamora uses the first two stanzas to set the tone of the poem before he delves into the actual description of what, or in this case what did not, happen. The third stanza is also important to note because it demonstrates how immigrants from different countries are able to find a common ground because of how alienated they feel living in the United States, shown through Zamora’s bleak description of his “cratered-deforested homeland” as the two of them are making hollow vows together to return to their respective homes.
The following two stanzas explore what could have prospectively happened on their date. What is interesting to note is how close attention Zamora plays to geography, both physically on the body, as well as through his language. The second two lines of the fourth stanza reads as almost a geographic survey of the contours of this woman’s body, and this map making is continued into the opening line of the penultimate stanza, through the use of “latitude,” a word commonly associated with geography and maps. The final couplet moves away from the geographic imagery and leaves the reader thinking of violence. As the last poem in this collection, it can be expected that the reader has picked up on some of the common tropes Zamora employs throughout. One of these images is that of “stars falling” and is inextricably linked to being shot at, as displayed in a number of other poems. So, when the speaker is alone, “wishing stars would fall as rain, on that huge dark country ahead of me,” he is really tapping into a darker desire to enact violence upon his adopted home country. (NOTE: It can be assumed that he is not looking across the Mexican border because the Hudson River and South Ferry are both locations in New York City. I cannot vouch for Cornelia Street Café, but I assume it is in New York as well.)
Skylar Diamandis
In the piece Postpartum, Javier Zamora writes through his mother’s voice attempting to capture her emotions toward his father. The speaker’s tone is both bitter and indignant because Zamora’s mother is so angry at his father, yet it is also melancholy and anxious about her newborn son. The poem also begins and ends by focusing on the child, Javier Zamora. He also shifts his writing from uses English to Spanish in order to magnify his mother’s emotion. Zamora intertwines his mother’s feelings toward himself and his father in order to contrast his mother’s anger and her worries about her child.
The mother’s tone shifts between a melancholy, despondent tone to an indignant tone and back again. This shift in tone contrasts two stressors in his mother’s life by pinning the worry of a mother’s love against the hatred for the man that is that child’s father. The poem begins with the line, “My son’s in the other room.” By putting Javier not directly within sight or reach of her, she has space to contemplate how worried she is about him. Even from birth he “came out yellow,/some deficiency, got incubated, hasn’t/stopped crying.” This immediate fear for her son jumpstarts her anxiety over his well being. The absence of his father at the time of birth also forces the opposing feelings to intertwine and convolute the mother’s true emotion for her son, love. The complexity of her emotion is detailed when she switches her thoughts directly from the birth of her child to his father. His mother must contemplate how her son came to be. She says, “I wish he hears my moans/when he’s on top of his whores.” Here, his mother means that Zamora’s father probably sexually assaulted her as well as other women. By having Zamora, his mother will always have a reminder of her abuser. Toward the end of the poem, the poem shifts back to focusing on baby Zamora. In the last line Zamora’s mother questions, “Why won’t he drink from me?” This shift back to fear and sadness illuminates that she is so upset to not be able to care for her child. It is almost if she is shifting blame onto herself for not being able to provide and support Zamora, even though she has just gone through a long thought process about her hatred toward his father. By bookending the poem with feelings toward her son with feelings about his father in the middle, Zamora shows the two contrasting emotions of love and hate combining into a complex new emotion that is neither love nor hate, but somewhere in the middle.
Zamora changes the text to Spanish rather than English to magnify his mother’s skewed emotions. His mother calls his grandmother “esa puta.” Translated to English “esa puta” means that bitch. “Puta” in Spanish is also a much larger insult than it is in English. This extremely strong word used to describe the grandmother creates a stronger emotion than would an English word. Later in the poem the mother admits, “I am crazy, but not/estúpida.” The use of the word “estúpida” expands the mother’s pain by being assumed she is stupid. The shift in language also gives her emotion a deeper meaning because Spanish is assumed to be the mother’s native language and so she can only express her deepest emotion when she speaks in Spanish. She then says, “If I catch him, me las va pagar./Me las va pagar.” “Me las va pagar” in English means he will pay me. The repetition of this phrase indicates that Zamora’s mother is completely intent on forcing Zamora’s father pay her. She wants him not only to pay for the child in real money, but also what he has done to her. The father has caused Zamora’s mother indeterminable amounts of emotional pain that the mother needs repayment for in some way or another. The change from English to Spanish in a few places shows a deeper emotion that could be told in English, both because some words in Spanish have a harsher meaning than in English, and that it is the native language of the speaker.
Works Cited
“Postpartum.” Unaccompanied, by Javier Zamora, Copper Canyon Press, 2017, p. 45.