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.