Strawberries and Cream
by Jeff Dolven

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             {As a proof of the impossibility of artificial intelligence} the inability
             to enjoy strawberries and cream may have struck the reader as
             frivolous. Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy delicious
             dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic.
                                       (Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”)

It doesn’t make the mmmmmm you might expect
(the level drone refrigerators dream
in nights of never tasting what’s inside),
rather bumps along, its irregular rhythms
expressing subtleties of pleasure I,
its sole creator, cannot always discern.
But what a comfort when it’s working well:
somewhere in its heart a filament thrills
with unreflective pleasure, like a child’s.

It savors this fruit it never had to choose;
it does not bore or sicken, grow out or up
or old. It runs a tireless electric tongue
over the skin, the dimples plugged with seeds
like mattress buttons, the wrinkled sheets of cream.
Nothing is diminished or consumed;
the feeling is so pure it can be hard
to tell the thing’s turned on at all. Sometimes
I lie for hours, listening to be sure.

"Strawberries and Cream," by Jeff Dolven, from SPECULATIVE MUSIC by Jeff Dolven, copyright © 2013 Sarabande Books. Used by permission of Sarabande Books.