of a neighbour’s television. Another daily briefing. But for that, an uncanny quiet, the birds and the garden’s green amplified by early morning rainfall, now preened and pinked with sunlight.

lockdown
the rattle of a stone
in the crow’s craw

The family who first flaunted face masks have set the curtains twitching across the street with their flouting of the new laws, visitors coming and going, one even announcing herself with a pimped exhaust.

Tongues are wagging.

“What’s sauce for the goose...”

“Exactly. I feel fine, where’s the harm?”

Another victim dehumanised by a line graph. They might think differently when there’s a body bag and it’s little Tommy’s gran.

the faces
behind the figures...
dandelion lawn

Claire Everett

is the author of two tanka collections, twelve moons and The Small, Wild Places; and co-author of Hagstones: A Tanka Journey with Joy McCall, and Talking in Tandem with her husband, Tony Everett. In 2017, Claire joined the editorial panel for the Red Moon Anthology. She served on the editorial team for Take Five Best Contemporary Tanka (Volume 4, 2011), and in 2015 she edited the Tanka Society of America’s Members’ Anthology, Spent Blossoms. She served as tanka-prose editor for Haibun Today [from December 2011 thru September 2016], and as founding editor of Skylark Publishing and Skylark: the journal [from the inaugural issue in April 2013 thru the final issue, Summer 2019].

Claire is mum to five children and step-mum to two and likes nothing better than to be cycling through the Dales with Tony on their trusty tandem Tallulah, or walking on the North Yorkshire Moors.