Cleave of The Month August 2009

A year since The Cleave began is a good time to resume Cleave of The Month.

As stated before we will be awarding GBP25 to the cleave of the month from now on, and it will be chosen by the Editor.

It is hard choosing between the great cleaves especially these 3:

• The New Tree by Dennis Kelly

• Down by the Lake by Ashley Bovan

• In Such a Place as This, by Jessica Lafortune

in the end the decision was:

Down by the Lake by Ashley Bovan

Under a nearby weeping willow	a flock of geese pad and poke
a push-chair rattles along	Alice wipes mud from an off-green park bench
two bedlam kids squawking	then she rests
Vicious seagulls hunt for sandwich fragments	Exhaust fumes, and hums and grinds, from the morning motor-rush waft over
Alice fidgets and then heads off to the rose gardens	a discarded sheet of kitchen roll sticks to her shoe
The flowers sway like nodding dogs in the backs of cars	She listens to echoing Greensleeves again and again piping out from the ice cream van over on the promenade
Up-wind an old boy fires up his acrid briar	it’s time to move on
She takes the tarmac path around and up to the rockery tasting the hint of salt blown in from the bay	A brittle crisp packet rattles, trapped in an exclamation-mark-like tree
She wanders through the patterns of rocks	Her arms droop by her side
and she catches her hand on a clump of nettles	Reluctantly, she prepares herself for the long walk home

Ashley Bovan lives and writes in Cardiff and starts studying for an MA

in Creative Writing at Lancaster University in October 2009.

His website is www.ashley-bovan.co.uk