Mirikitani's use of the virgule and its different effect in each line in which it is used.
Virgule is can be seen as a form of slash or stroke (/) that help to divides two words in a poem in order to deepen the poem's meaning and effect.
"on the newsprint/face" has an effect where the newspaper is facing up or that a woman's face is on it. "back then/just after" also has an effect where we're looking back to the camps, but then immediately looking towards the future of it. And "when the land/dried/up" has an effect where after the tragedy of the camps, there was nothing but only a dry dessert because of how traumatic the camps were.
Therefore Virgules are been used to often make the ideas more inclusive or to emphasize.
In phychology the term blank state or tabula rasa actually has two meaning the first refers to a belief that at birth all humans are born with the ability to become literally
