but can we TALK about the racialized subtext of "his wife has filled his house with chintz" linking together femininity, indian export goods, commercialism, and superficiality vs "to keep it real I fuck him on the floor" linking together masculinity, AAVE, authenticity, sexuality, and vulgarity? if our aim as critics of poetry is to reevaluate this text and arrive at a feminist interpretation then we must also consider the poem's vexed relationship to race so as to not be anti-black in our criticism of the piece's presentation of masculinized sexuality nor uncritically reproduce and elevate its image of orientalized femininity.
also, from looking at the original post (non-explicit gay sex photo but still a gay sex photo so you've been warned): there isn't even any chintz in the photo. the design elements in the room all look broadly western european with the exception of a tall ceramic vessel that may be decorated with a reproduction of a chinese ink painting. chintz is an indian textile pattern, you'll see it on dresses, bedspreads, wallpaper, tapestries, upholstery, etc., but nothing like that is in the image. to imply that the house's interior design is frivolous, artificial, and unusable, the poem utilizes "chintz" despite the obvious lack of chintz because "chintz," as a popular asian export good that went on to be imitated by european manufacturers, is considered kitsch, cheap, and womanly. and, though the angle partially obscures them, the two men in the photo both appear to be white, so the poem uses the AAVE phrase "keep it real" despite the lack of black people to invoke the perception of AAVE as raw, crass, and primal. in both cases, the racialized language is being ascribed to european/white subjects to impart the white subjects with different moral values.
