I love the directness and simplicity of the diction in this poem; yet also the way it makes several subtle turns in tone. It is a poem not of gratuitous shock or dramatic revelation, but of engaging, understated micro surprises. What seems as if it might become a tense, sombre commentary on climate crisis steps into something with a gentle sense of humour, which is still laced with a darker knowledge and a more melancholic undertow. 

Early on, the playfully imaginative transformation of the household appliance meant that I expected it to become a more cartoon-like, comic animation of the inanimate: that the hovering toaster-drone might act like a kind of side-kick, somehow: either the mischievous, sarcastic hot little devil that drives characters to do dirty deeds, or the righteous, angelic conscience that urges the speaker to do something more about this physical heat, and the increasingly fiery rhetoric felt at large on the political scene—not just in the toaster’s own gradual malfunctioning. Yet the final turn in the poem—which I think of as similar to the graceful meditative movements of tai chi—is both back into the contemplative note of poetry itself, but also to a recognition of mortality. The overall effect is calming, centring: as if the poet’s voice somehow settles and soothes the ferocity implicit at the start. That is perhaps a strange and partial solace for the toaster-as-oracle to offer, and yet—it also makes perfect sense, from this little metal box that has started to act like a pyre, a source of smoke and ashes.