‘Ingrate’ by Claire Askew

To get what you don’t want
out of your life, I’ve read
there’s a ritual: write the thing
on a ticket, fold it in a deep bowl,
ash pan, bucket, and light it.
As the smoke rises, think of that thing
unpleating in the white air,
blowing off like chaff.

They sell the tickets in the Mexican store
where Nick works. They come
in squat little wallets,
in hundreds, and I wonder
who has that many things to burn.
It’s touchpaper, Nick says, running a pack
through the till for me, like you use
to make fires. They go up fast.

Now I have to choose what’s not welcome.
I’m in the garden folding tickets,
letting them fall and click as they hit
the mixing bowl’s porcelain sides: methodical,
like shucking the skins off something.
I’m looking at the rosebay willowherb and wanting
it gone: writing down the dandelion clocks,
gluttonous slugs in the sorrel.

I’m pulling my life up by its roots,
tossing it onto the pile. I don’t want
the bother of mornings, waking to dishes
unwashed, the lost voice of breakfast
radio, rain getting comfy on the playing fields.
I don’t want this never-finished house,
brick ocarina playing the winter’s
bum note, bare bulbs scalding the plaster.

Somewhere there’s a big fire already coming,
the weather’s bringing its things inside
like it knows. It turns out I can’t light
my ring of tickets: the match is lost
in the seeding couch grass.
I unconcertina each one, and smooth it.
I’ve written the same thing
on all of them.

From issue #2: spring/summer 2016

About the Author
Claire Askew’s debut collection, This changes things, was published by Bloodaxe in February 2016. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and its poems have been recognised by numerous publications and awards. Claire’s new collection-in-progress, How To Burn A Woman, is about witches and the natural world.