The Mysterious Solo Fete of the Milk Drinker

staring back at AI with our powerful human gaze

This picture really captured my imagination. I assume it was made with AI, such as DALL-E. I presume the point is to sell the black object with handles. But, boy do I have questions about this woman and her life and this strange feast here.

And so, I thought it might be fun and worthwhile to cast a human gaze back across the non-human-created image. I start out by sort of reverse-engineering a hilariously specific prompt that may have resulted in this image, and I devolve into unanswerable questions and strange speculations about this person… Join me?

The Mysterious Solo Fete of the Milk Drinker

put a woman, satisfied looking,
having a non-threatening level
of beauty;
a ponytail of dark hair,
grey top, crisp white towel
tucked around her neck
like she has recently completed
a workout; eyeth she not
the camera, but lo, her eyes
are cast down upon a
white-frosted glass of milk
she raises to her lips;
this is a wholesome picture,
a tale of a white and
bone-building beverage
and a woman, who,
though alone, is not really
                   alone.

and cast before her,
hiding the tips of her gold-ringed
fingers, a spread of offerings;
a pyramid of golden cake-like balls,
three layers high with three on top,
in a white bowl, a miniature one
torn open nearby to reassure her
about the contents of the interior;
don't worry, there's no jelly,
no gooshy pastry-cream,

beside this offering,
a sloppily frosted vanilla cupcake
topped with a parsimonious
amount of nuts; the photoshop
person was told 'food,' and no one
knows without asking
what she would like,
so maybe it's that,
and an artist's conception
of three blueberries, dew-kissed,
with some leaves to indicate
their provenance as actual
fruits of the soil, and
one-and-a-half strawberries,
nestled upon their serrated leaves,
cut half immodestly put forward
to delight the eye with its gradations
and striations from red to white,

and just to the left
of the object for sale, which is
a behandled black metal cover
for the modesty of your
kitchen burners when they
desist from glowing with passionate heat
beneath your pot of water
or skillet of spuds --
beside that, a cartoonishly large
and better-garnished cupcake,
topped with a trio of raspberries
and perky mint leaf twins,
ski slopes of white frosting forming
a Gordian knot cut down
from ethereal heights
to approachable, edible proportions
by a sprinkling of scarlet crumb.

Alas, we do not know:
is she being buttered up?
plied, inveigled, bribed?
or feted, for her natal day,
for accomplishments in
an operating theater or court of law,
a spreadsheet or cockpit of a fighter jet,
or for dumb luck in a game of chance
that will soon and steadily consume
the life her family has built thus far?
is she being wooed?
by pastry chef or custodial staff?

Perhaps she's deceased,
reabsorbed into a milky and satisfying
afterlife, and thus withholds her gaze,
and thus, the photoshopper has
set before her the customary favorites,
as before a shrine.

is she being fattened unto fidelity
by a lover making sneaky use of her sweet tooth
as an inroads to claim all of her, forever?
But is she too wily for that,
contenting herself with the milk?
Is she devoted to bone-building calcium?
Did she milk the cows herself bright and early,
making the towel more of a clean and fluffy
accoutrement of a bovine business model
and not a workout towel after all?

Are the sweets for some children
or shuffleboard players arriving soon,
just out of scene?
Is this meant to depict and instruct us in
the elements of a healthy breakfast?
Did she lay out these items personally,
or instruct her staff to do so,
according to a calculating plan?
Is she about to sell an RV
or a time share, so that the milk
may as well be a tall glass
of sweet, cool, honest money,
or is money, in the last estimation,
the farthest thing from her mind?