Alex Skovron is the author of six collections of poetry and a prose novella. The many public readings he has given include appearances in China, Serbia, India and Ireland, as well as Norfolk Island. A bilingual selection of his poetry translated into French was published in 2013 under the title The Attic, a volume of Chinese translations is underway, and his novella The Poet has been translated into Czech. His most recent book is Towards the Equator: New & Selected Poems (2014), and a collection of his short stories is forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann.

Diminished Light

The little girl in the laundromat
is sitting so still
she could be a mirage. What
is she thinking, watching a sky crawl
with purple? Soon its shell
will crack, and rolled umbrellas
under everybody’s arm will billow

into their mushroom shapes,
and her mother watching the porthole
where a world spins will take
her by the arm, and soon she’ll fall
into her usual
late-afternoon haze as they cross
the glistened street, no less

and no more distant than before,
the wind clouding her face
the way the shopfronts suddenly share
diminished light, the way no voice
could say her sadness,
make real the little girl
hopping alongside, hungry bird.