by Desiraé Simmons
When artificial intelligence takes over,
and is programmed to remember all
that we must forget
in order to break our bonds,
Of the before and after
Of the below and above,
will it accurately remember
What a Black Body is?
On a piece of land once a plantation,
still owned by the visiting descendants,
we listened to a fourth generation genealogist
telling the stories of 200+ Black Bodies buried.
“Entire state of Virginia is a cemetery,”
as her grandmother would say.
The State approved a data center
on a heart-shaped parcel,
a documented slave cemetery,
to clear the land and draw electricity
from the people — alive and dead.
AI needs more space than we can imagine.
It consumes our time, our future, our relationships—
with ourselves, with each other
with our environment, where what can be
still exists.
It is not difficult to unbury those sacred places
where our ancestors’ bodies lay.
Just look for the signs of regeneration.
Periwinkle growing, a sign of memory and devotion;
Cedar saplings used as headstones, created
a portal to the afterlife.
Some want to put Ypsilanti on the map with
a supercomputer to do our thinking.
Then maybe we’ll have more time
to break all our bodies
for their profit once again.
But not by all of us who still remain.
We who do the work of remembering.
Fighting to preserve a history that
is being buried, while struggling to overcome
the 1870 brick wall where the paper trail fades.
Will AI be able to compute:
Who we were before we put its needs before
all beings? Near and far in space or time?
When will the extraction of Black Bodies end?
Seek records of births, deaths… escapes,
fiduciary papers, wills, appraisements, patents,
fill in the stories of the actual people.
How deeply it mines for the riches!
Unsatisfied with extracting from what is,
it must take from what was and what will be.
Its thirst for more cannot be quenched.
We keep repeating the same patterns,
depleting the bodies of human, water, land,
until we have used up the best of who we are,
just to be programmed to feed the void.
Who will recall that it exists
where Black Bodies were laid to rest?
Will AI be silent? Will it applaud its work?
Will it simply cease to remember
that it was ever any other way, and credit
the importance of the land as its creation?
Remain determined to trace back a life
that was worth the trauma of being treated
like property. It is painful. Not cathartic.
But still necessary simply to be known.
But, AI is merely what we feed it.
and it will never be satiated.
It will take our memories, our ideas,
our dreams, our resources, our stories,
and it will never have enough.
It will keep repeating the same patterns,
trying to fill the void of being real.
Los Alamos National Laboratory,
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor,
The Carter, Winston, Wickham, Shirley
Family Plantations in Virginia,
those who only see land as a commodity to control.
Who only see humans as some thing to own.
AI’s explanation of who we are, who we were,
who we will be, is in the hands of those
who forgot that we are all connected.
We must never forget what is difficult;
to preserve what can’t be programmed.
If artificial intelligence takes over,
will it even know what a Black Body Is?
periwinkle. photo credit: c. finch
***
Desiraé Simmons (she/they) is a community organizer, advocate, poet, and elected official. She lives in Ypsi with Zander and Indigo who offer a portal to her wildest dreams. About this poem, she writes: “This poem started when I was visiting Virginia, the data center capital, and listened to a Black genealogist share the history of the land. I felt a core shaking as we informed her that the “data center” being built on a known African-American cemetery was to house a supercomputer. When a data center was proposed in Ypsi, I knew I had to tie these stories together, and to imagine a future where we learned from the past and stopped the spread of capitalistic harm.”
***
This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, a Washtenaw-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at [email protected].
