Three Poems by Holly Painter

Please Let Me Wonder

I’ve been idolizing you and fantasizing

About the relationship we might have

For a long time now

And that probably would’ve continued

But now we’re actually talking

And I’m on the verge of hyperventilating

But wait, don’t tell me how you really feel

Let me keep pretending you love me

As much as I love you

I based my college decision, career, and hobbies on you

Hoping we’d get closer if we had the same interests

You can’t imagine how much I hate artisan bread-making

My idealized love and my idealized you

Have become my life

And reality might kill me

So don’t tell me how you really feel

Let me keep pretending you love me

As much as I love you

When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)

My twenties won’t last forever

Someday I’ll be thirty

And it’s freaking me out

California Girls

Women from the East Coast dress well
Southern women have charming accents
Midwestern women are fully adequate
Northern women give arousing kisses

But I like Californian women best
If it were possible
I’d like all women to be Californian

West Coast sunlight results in marvelous tanning and
I’m into bikini-clad women on the beach under palm trees
I’ve done a lot of traveling and met a lot of women
But I’m always eager to return home to my preferred sort of females

I like Californian women best
If it were possible
I’d like all women to be Californian