“When There Were Ghosts” is a free-verse poem that uses elements of magical realism. The 24 lines are broken into couplets: 12 stanzas of two lines each. The structure of the couplets mirrors the poem’s thematic borderlands and blending: Two lines mirror two towns (Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico), two times (past and present), and two projected images (on the smoke and on the screen). This puts the form and content in harmony, all working together to advance the ideas of the poem. There is no set meter: Lines vary in length and syllabic stresses.

Many sentences of the poem continue across lines and even stanzas. Not ending a sentence at the end of a line is called enjambment. Structurally, throughout the poem, enjambment represents how the speaker crosses to “the Mexico side” (Line 1) of Nogales in his childhood. One specific example of enjambment across stanza is:

So that María Félix and Pedro Armendáriz

Looked a little like my aunt and one of my uncles—

And so they were, and so were we all in the movies,

Which is how I remember it: Popcorn in hand,

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