I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.
This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.
As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: āfuck him on the floor.ā The use of āchintzā is indeed great word choice.
Because Iām insane, decided to scan the poem:
Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.
There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of ākeep it realā juxtaposed with āchintz.ā It causes me to interpret the āchintzā more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of āfuck,ā which is a contrast with āchintzā but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where āchintzā is flimsy and inanimate.
And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is āfilled with chintzāāsomething that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with ākeep it real.ā
The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wifeās marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something āreal.ā Thatās a story, and itās just two lines.
This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, yāall. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.
From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.
stormborns
gracieabrams
ellievsbear
germansingergirl
