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My Perfect Cognate
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 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 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.
My Perfect Cognate interrogates the connections and contrasts at the sharp edges of her 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 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.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
About the author
Natalie Scenters-Zapico
8 books52 followersNatalie Scenters-Zapico is from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A. and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México. She is the author of The Verging Cities, which won the Great Lakes Colleges' Association New Writers Award, the National Association of Chicana/o Studies Poetry Award, and was featured as a top ten debut by Poets and Writers (June 2015). A 2015 CantoMundo fellow, her poems have appeared in American Poets, The Believer, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, The Best American Poetry 2015, and more. She lives in Salt Lake City.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 28, 2025
Astonishing.
November 29, 2025
Relatable and resonant meditations on motherhood; precise and personal interrogations of the border and immigration policies; great sound and intensity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews