swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

she is ancient crimson
Vitoria Perez

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i. windowpain_corruptedfile

does the machine ever wonder
if its memory is faulty

if there is a click
somewhere deep in the

old office telephones
their wires curled

round working fingers
round tired fingers

round hands unstable

shaking trembling worried

there in the air is blood
raining thunderously upon us
soaking our hair and running our
flesh slick with it, thick with

scabs thick with cash thick with
pus and tears and bone fragments
it is not what we do, not what
we are made to do, not what we
are supposed to do

v. documento sin título

there is a black mantel
it belongs to she, divine
she, just and she vengeful

for her people she would
swallow the moon –
with her arms outstretched
palms skyward, mahogany fingers splayed
she unhinges her jaw and makes

makes telephone poles snap
makes eyes roll to the rosy

sunless sky, she is red she is brilliant,

she is pent-up fury, she is ancient
crimson, she bears the fruit of the
vine, and she crosses her tools
above her head, and she
lifts her hopes to the celestial bodies
and offers the planet to them

palmsover eyes _?movement

open… Ctrl+O_

palms pressed against cool walls
of stone, tell me what is cyclical

save as… Ctrl+Shift+S_

tell me what comes in eclipses
is it the tides of human bones
rushing toward us

print… Ctrl+P_

crying for help, eviscerated
screaming with raw throats
while we greet and hug and
kiss and sell and buy and
wallow
while we hang our silent heads

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Vitoria Perez is a multiethnic, multilingual poet from Louisiana. Her work touches upon obsolete and aging (per conventional standard) technology, and the Southern Gothic of the early 1900s. It moves in and out of discussing mental wellness and illness, struggles for worldwide worker’s liberation, and introspection as a queer woman of color. Vitoria’s work can be found published in Déraciné, Réapparition, Expanded Field, and elsewhere.