Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
My Perfect Cognate

My Perfect Cognate

Scenters-Zapico, Natalie

Paperback

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 1556597274
ISBN13: 9781556597275
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: Sep 30 2025
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.80
Language: English

Staggering between English and Spanish, language becomes Scenters-Zapico's mirror, reflecting her body, her family, and the borders that confine them.

My Perfect Cognate interrogates the connections and contrasts at the sharp edges of her in-betweens: violence and softness, motherhood and isolation, the border between the United States and Mexico, where the author and her mother were often stopped, interrogated. Written from the depths of severe post-partum depression, Natalie Scenters-Zapico searches for a language that can hold both personal and communal pain. When Spanish and English seem insufficient, she leans on the connection between the two languages: the cognate. Originally a way to document lineage through the mother, the cognate provides a possible bridge of understanding. Yet, for every cognate that works as a mirror reflection, the wave of a border agent's hand, a stamped passport, a false cognate that works as an expired visa, a rejected biometric scan, a port of entry shut down by violent legislation. Natalie Scenters-Zapico mines the depths of linguistic cognate theory to write poems that go beyond translation and mistranslation. We find hope in a translingual landscape that breaks open borders.

Also from

Scenters-Zapico, Natalie

View All

Also in

General Poetry

View All