Poetry: Coding a Demi-griot (An Olivian Measure)

by Armoni Boone

Originally published in Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction

READ ME.txt 

This repository could embody your birthright. Fate will look at us, with their pen in hand, and demand our name.

My family dynasties were a song sung in laughter.

My mythos started at a family gathering

with my name being cackled into a napkin. 

Lore grew from middle school shenanigans, high school sweethearts and inside jokes that sent my cousins hollering between rooms. 

You would've heard my birth story at my graduation and on Christmas. You will hear it at my homegoing with varying detail. And, even in death, I would be committed to smiling politely. 

Memories make demi-griots possible— synthetic minds fed on abandoned group chats and old journals. Marginal notes from cookbooks flavor our archives along with the scraps of celebrity gossip across eras. 

Demi-griots bind memory to ceremony.

This can be a griot to beget all griots.

INSTILLATION.txt

> Download and extract source files

> Attach gold dermal circuits 

> Allow wrist apparatus to sync to neural networks.

> Set up griot's skeleton. (Note: Ensure that it is charged and is holding memento to focus on.)

> Proceed, as The Spirit leads. 

INTERFACE / SAMPLE ACTIVATION.txt

This device whirred to life. A constellation of letterforms flashed across my mind 

to my hands to my mouth to a myth to the legends that made me.

My demi-griot knelt before me. Its heart, a custom server, found a home in an heirloom simmer pot held between its plastic fingers.

Tambourines ring into a crescendo. (Note: my lab technicians we're required to raise their hands toward vitality, our hymns unfurl into a hum.)

My hands become weightless, anchored by wire couplings and modules. 

Gold paths conduct stories across my skin. 

Static orbits my wrists, tickling forth goosebumps like stars emerging at sunfall.

These palms are now outstretched through time, salivating at my totality. 

I can invoke Cousin [Ur##_&], and the way they found comfort in running from prophecies and towards strange homes or soft laps for respite. Their pursuit drove them to an island that planted a new tongue in their mouth. They returned home alone, but enough with story fragments for a lifetime.  

I remade my father to [//file_corrupted]... 

I postulate a future where Uncle [Sp4-683] had the money to study abroad in Paris. He would have discovered ways to touch up his murals at 5 Pointz. Though, my archives hold images of him reclining in his home, flirting with his medical attendant when she came around. 

Suddenly, my demi-griot reached to hold my hand and we remade my father from a wound. He layed in a hospital room that I took too long to find. My hands clasped in his. His eyes are welling and his voice is weak. 

I was probably the second-to-last person to hear him laugh. He admitted that he wanted to be married to a man not found in my records. I only remember his joy. The caress of his hands. The "I'll see you soon" sliding from my lips like a damn lie. 

I have pulled at threads where I've fathered sons and sung with the voice of a thousand eldest daughters. I see through old and unmade eyes that can spot the shape of the curses that try to claim us.

This device can be more than the seed of an idea. This is the means to design a seed worth sowing.