Citizen Illegal

The poems are written in free verse. There is no regular meter or rhyme. The other immediately noticeable thing is the unusual typography. Apart from the poem titles, which are in title case (that is, capitalized except for articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions), the poems are presented entirely in lower case, including the pronoun “I,” which is rendered “i” throughout. There is also frequent use of the ampersand (&) instead of the word “and.” 

Proper nouns, however, such as names for people, places, and things, are capitalized. There are some exceptions. US president Donald Trump is “trump” (“Mexican American Obituary,” 32) and “I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At,” 31), indicating authorial disapproval, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed by the United States and Mexico in 1848, is rendered in lower case—“treaty of guadalupe hidalgo” (“Gentefication,” 65). As a condition of the treaty, which ended the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded a large amount of territory to the United States. Olivarez renders it in lower case to express his disapproval. 

Quite often, the form approximates standard poetic forms such as the unrhymed quatrains (four-line stanzas) that make up “My Parents Fold Like Luggage” and “I Wake in a Field of Wolves with the Moon,” “On My Mom’s 50th Birthday,” “The Day My Little Brother Gets Accepted into Grad School,” and “When the Bill Collector Calls & I Do Not Have the Heart to Answer.