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Light gets cruelly overworked. Sweet June
comes last, pentameter’s fifth stress,
almost always rhymed with good old moon.
To make fresher verse, sonneteers obsess,

scan thesauri, i. d. Eden’s snake –
rattler? garter? asp? Not a moot
point. Antoinette talked generic cake.
We think bombe or torte. A woman – beaut?

hag? fox? felt-hatted Greta Garbo,
pinafored Snow White? (While iambs play,
a real cop grabs his stick, beats a hobo;
unmetered lines will speak another day.)

For now, the couplet’s wrist – zircon? rhinestone?
Which spritz – My Sin? lavender cologne?Margaret A. Robinson has had over one hundred poems accepted in publications like California Quarterly, Fiddlehead, and Bathtub Gin. A print chapbook of thirty of her cheekiest poems, "Sparks," is from Pudding House Publications.

as if pale doves lit
my kitchen with their wings
beating smoke

as if a shell sang
silver coins
into my bed

and your answer
turned to sapphire
and stayed spoken

as if the water
in my bath
turned to wineA New Hampshire native, Kelley White studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty years. Her poems have been widely published over the past five years, including several book collections and chapbooks.

My son claims
when it suits him
that he is afraid of birds.
He likes them otherwise,
can name robin, crow and cardinal,
and recognize the call
of the mourning dove.
But a flock of gray wings rising
knocks air beneath the ribs,
and who does not know this,
really, the bared-knuckle teeth
of the familiar. Alison Hicks’ poetry has appeared in Amoskeag, Eclipse, HeartLodge, Philadelphia Poets, Literary Mama, Peregrine, The Ledge, Pinyon, The Wooster Review and other magazines. A novella, Love: A Story of Images appeared in May, 2004. She founded Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio to offer community-based creative writing workshops using the Amherst Writers & Artists method.

Like waves lapping the surf,
ruffled white petals
of brush strokes converge
at the core, where luminous
lavender radiates outward.

Its youth will last,
glistening in oil,
unlike the peony outside my window
which will slowly brown
and bow to the ground.Maria Ligos’ work has appeared in The Mad Poets Review, Philadelphia Poets, & will be published in the Spring, 2005 issue of The Mid America Poetry Review.

Two doors down
Tom Doyle mulches his garden
his wife works inside
dusting and vacuuming. His motorcycle
sits silent. In imagination
I take the bike for a ride. I drive
through the country roads in South Jersey
past the antique store
with the red, white, and blue
Open banner flapping in the breeze.
I pass the produce stands
advertising fresh strawberries
and asparagus. I pass the mare
and her colt, munching
on clover by the fence post,
then, I stop at the bay
where the salty breeze soothes
and solitude is pleasing.
Tom Doyle
finishes his yard work
his wife, her dusting.
They sit on the patio
while the sun glazes everything orange.
They feast on burgers from the grill
maybe an ear of corn, a bottle
of draft and sit silently
until the sun fades
and darkness spreads across the sky.Maria Ligos’ work has appeared in The Mad Poets Review, Philadelphia Poets, & will be published in the Spring, 2005 issue of The Mid America Poetry Review.

On the shady back porch of his summer home,
Uncle Dan, even and easy like my mother,
constructs a lamp from wooden matchsticks.
Calls me Crisco. Aunt Mary cuts chunks
of gelatinous lard into the flour
in the vermilion bowl. I am eleven,
in t-shirt and shorts, and click my Wrigley’s.
I cringe and shrink from him. Nine years later,
as I take the novice’s white veil,
he stands proudly next to me,
my starved body swallowed in the folds
of a lily-colored linen gown and scapular,
my thick hair shorn, face pallid as a scone.

At five the Sisters chose me to crown the Virgin
Queen of the May. She was elegant,
imperially slim, unlike my full-breasted mother,
whisking the stir-about, mewling babies on each hip,
Her brother Dan, still single, reading The Daily News,
slurps cereal and sips from a china cup
the tea she brewed for him. She was a slave.
Each day in school the Virgin loomed above us
her exquisite hands outstretched, index finger
beckoning me.
One by one we dropped our daisies–
her perfected foot crushing the head of the serpent. Liz Dolan is a wife, mother, grandmother, and retired English teacher. She is most proud of the alternative school she ran in the Bronx. Liz has published poems, memoir and short stories in New Delta Review, Nidus, Dream Streets, Rattle, Literary Mama, Canadian Woman Studies, Small Spiral Notebook, and many more. She is currently implementing a grant by organizing a traveling exhibit of her fellow poets’s poetry throughout southern Delaware.

I can’t call you: it rained.
you, far off deep dearth space
my voice trailing
left in the birdless wire
washed through and leaking onto them
onto the honeysuckled road
where the freckle-braided girl drips
her sweet hummingbird water
onto the backfence-met boy.
quiet dawn cotton-dressed market run
denim dusted south field ride
piston-pluck, raised tongue
bee-stung lips and
arms full of promise.
he kisses her in apple quilted patterns
under dripping phone lines,
old love stolen in every drop.
No, I’ll wait for the rain change
summer thunder fade,
early morning secrets rust and
wet dew breath noonday dried.
I’ll call when that nectar harvest ends,
when those syrup taps are shut
and the coast is clear
of young lovers.Christine is a fiction writer and member of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writer’s Group. After living in the Rittenhouse Square area for several years, she moved to Delaware County, where she lives with her husband, daughter, one saintly cat and one very lucky fish. According to Poconos-raised Christine, the suburbs are definitely the weirdest place she’s ever lived.

A poem about the night should offer
solace at the end, and, on the way, a list
of images the dark assembles
for our pleasure: the drowsy swallows, light
fading on brick and granite, the passing
rain, the slow calming of the mind. So logically,
this poem should celebrate the early dark
our clocks insist on, shoving nature toward
its longest shadow, sending us indoors.
But I spend this Sabbath cursing shadows
that bleach the garden’s brightness, cursing crows
that quit their yammering at dusk — even
the solitary singer cruising 34th
Street, falsetto swirling "This Little Light
of Mine" then a segue to "When Night
Comes Down" syncopating hymn and lovesong
into one, drowning the distant sirens,
calming our angry minds that see death’s footprints
through the gold fans the gingkos spread across
the concrete, though he can’t know this
and likely wouldn’t care.Deborah Burnham has lived in Powelton Village for about 30 years, and has taught at Penn for about the same length of time. Her poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review and Poetry, among other places.