when we moved from morecambe

out of the garage dark
whose door we raised with a thimble of power
                          before the spring kicked in like how our mothers’ mothers
brought light to fading eyelids with smelling salts

we sniffled to the guinea pig cage
just as we had yesterday when the first had passed
            to find the other with its stiff corpse preparing
for the murky window of the taxidermist

scratch of hay in my throat needle after needle
& the lonely colour locked in a ring of bell pepper
            i told myself the furry bastards must have shared a sickness
but when we rehearsed the story for our daughter

a single broken heart seemed the appropriate motive
 given how close the deaths came huddling together
               you asked me to fold the three-dimensions
of their cage into a flat plane

grid paper on which a kid
 first learns to suffer perspective or algebra
                                 all night I have been clawing the latch
but the metal does not give it is only a small failure

& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
            but to honour their world unwilling to collapse

In 2023, Warren placed first for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize. Warren is author of the pamphlet Fruit Knife Autopsy with Green Bottle Press. To date, Warren has been published in The Frogmore Papers, Magma, Orbis, Poetry Ireland, and Stand.