Cleaning the cooker
Dismantling the burners,
part inside part. So many meals
scorched onto them as dark fat,
the week’s routine teatimes.
Here someone’s spilt toffee sauce,
now transformed to carbonised grit,
here hard grains of uncooked rice
from a failed risotto, coagulations
of milk overflow. The cleaning sponge
fills with slime and sludge, aluminium
rings tenaciously grip the last scabs
of nameless brown residues.
Then careful reassembly: lining
up holes with nubbles, settling
burners back into sockets.
Click click click blam
and the gas ignites.
reinstating the miracle.
Ruth Aylett teaches and researches computing in Edinburgh. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines – for example The North, Agenda, Butcher’s Dog. Prole – and anthologies such as Scotia Extremis, Mancunian Way, Hallelujah for 50 ft Women. She was the winner of the 2016 Poets meet Politics Competition. She jointly authored the pamphlet Handfast with Beth McDonough in 2016(Mothers Milk) and her two single author pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) came out in 2021