Jennifer Fandel

The Deserted Island of Thirteen

When Ginger sashayed onto the screen,
I watched the tropical island ripen
with bananas, swell papayas to bursting.
All she had to do was swing her hips,
walking through sand in stiletto heels,
and Gilligan would fall all over
his straightened coconuts.

Each day after school
I dreamed and I waited

through the opening song, anticipated hat slaps
of Skipper onto his dumb Little Buddy,
and the Howell’s rich sniveling,

and I waited through the commercial break,
another of the professor’s brilliant discoveries,
and the twitterings of pigtailed Mary Ann.

I waited for the background music, sax-smooth,
to rise from the most sultry spot on the island,
the place, wherever it was, from which Ginger emerged,
asking the dim, heroic Gilligan for a tiny little favor
as she blinked her mink eyelashes.

I loved how Gilligan never lost his dream,
the screen rippling into mirage:
pursing his thin lips for her kiss
or bending his head down
for a crown of flowers.

Just the sight of her pretty feet in the shower
and Gilligan and I would pray
never to be rescued
from this deserted place.

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Jennifer Fandel has poetry forthcoming in Calyx and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press). Just as there are Mary Ann men and Ginger men, she contends that there are Gilligan women and Professor women. She is a Gilligan woman.