Introduction : lingering on Times Square -- Chiastic spaces: ports of entry, ports of exit -- The migrational city in Chuck Palahniuk's "Slumming" : a story by lady baglady, and Helena Viramontes's "The Cariboo Cafe" -- Unbound cities, concentric circles : Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of orange -- Borderlands : middle spaces, hybrid bodies -- The rhetoric of spatial cutting : borders, scars, open wounds -- Terminal thinking : border narratives, airport narratives, and the logic of detention -- Postscript conclusion : from The Great Wall to Babel.