Teen Angel
Even as prepubescent kids we recognized
the erotic possibilities of Annette Funicello,
a Mouseketeer with budding breasts,
a full six years older than me, pure girl.
We hung on her roles
in the Spin and Marty serials,
Anita Cabrillo in the Zorro series,
adolescent fancies exploding inside us.
But it was in her early twenties,
already at the mercy of our hormones,
in her series of Beach Party films,
alongside Frankie Avalon,
that she really featured in our prurient fantasies.
Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach,
Pajama Party, Beach Blanket Bingo,
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.
Annette as Dee Dee in Beach Blanket Bingo
sent our visions and desires into overdrive.
Only 45 when she began having balance issues, dizziness,
while promoting her Frankie Avalon reunion movie,
Back to the Beach, already a mom three times over,
she kept quiet for five more years
before the public disclosure of her multiple sclerosis.
I’d read Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy” –
glut thy sorrow on a morning rose –
and I knew beauty was fleeting,
but the reality of my teenage heartthrob
falling apart made the evanescence of time
a fact you could touch, smell.
©2024 Charles Rammelkamp All rights reserved.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.