1. Odysseus Hears of the Death of Kalypso by Donald
Revell http://5thin.gs/HbKPYL
All their songs are of one hour
Before dawn, when the birds begin.
I sing another.
In helpless midday, at the hour
Even sparrows have no heart to shrill
Comes news
. . . Suddenly, the unimaginable
Needs imagination and finds none.
Violet ocean only nothing.
Smoke of thyme and of cedar,
Ornate birds, nothing.
Even a god who came here,
Hearing a sweet voice,
Would find only old fires now,
Brittle in the blackened trees.
She was mast and sail. She was
A stillness pregnant with motion,
Adorable to me as, all my life,
I have hidden a cruel, secret ocean
In sinews and in sleep and cowardice.
She forgave me. Once, she wept for me.
Our child died then, and she is with him.
Source: Poetry (June 2008).
3. Fiction by Rae Armantrout http://5thin.gs/Hc63uo
4. I'm Over the Moon by Brenda Shaughnessy http://5thin.gs/Hc6rsT
5. Blue Statuary by Priscilla Becker http://5thin.gs/Hc821G
