Rick Agran is a poet, writer, and educator. For children he wrote a picture book, Pumpkin Shivaree (Handprint Books, 2003). A collection of poems, Crow Milk (Oyster River Press, 1997) had selections read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac on NPR.. He wonders about fine art and theatre as an A&E contributor to The Wire. At the New Hampshire Institute of Art he teaches artists another fine art: writing.

 

Indian River Pony Ride

Always three loves for two people

peekaboo masquerading

always a peony shy a petal

for a pony snack

 

always a rose-golden orb for desire’s

collect call accepted in Texas

little pink grapefruit, your phone number

on it in invisible ink

 

silken hum of a palm-held stone

always alone early eves, or

a palmful of water-smoothed porcelain

in your pattern

 

always animal grace’s velvet step

toward new love’s night-shot umbrella

sweet clementine-sigh as skin slips

surrenders sticky Spanish kisses

 

always an Ohio BlueTip spit and sparkle

and the dark’ll dapple

your crackleware bowlcut hello

nose to nose

***

Tickle Auspice

Your mom, she wrote it on you.

She wrote it on your body, a novel in invisible ink

and as you grew the prefixes came apart:

Pre fixed: meaning before you were able to fix them,

Apart: a severance becomes synthesis: a part.

Invisible: your blankfaced tattoo rewritten: in visible ink,

you, her inkling, her part, her pad.

The more you grow the more you divide:

di meaning two, twice, double, vide meaning to see,

I will tell you what it says on your back now:

RUN

***

Oriole Vortex

pastel pink apple blossom boughs
			an explosion of orchard orioles 
					rainmakers of pink petals		a chased crow
			gatling blasts of wing-flash form 
		their black & orange vortex
	sheer loop-the-loop & veer
& vanish