Nano Taggart

On Selecting the Contents of Care Package Number Three

We can’t help and we can’t help but postpone grief
with something. Our hero had given up but hope
has again regained hold. Isn’t it strange that zero

isn’t nothing? And so we learn you can buy time
(once it's running out) with winter’s inversion
bearing down so low we could lose the sun

if we didn’t know where to look. It's strange to know
that zero had to be invented as I notice Natalie’s row
of unlit candles has collected a thin skin. What would

you mail a twenty-five-year-old that's dying? Hand-
written notes from all of us. Knick-knacks of short
purpose? We feel as though we’ve cut a larger hole

around a hole. It’s stranger still that zero was invented
independently and all over. It’s not the same as nothing.
We’re making a list. A short list.

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Nano Taggart lives among the red rocks of southern Utah with the poet Natalie Padilla Young, where they stumble through the inner-workings of Sugar House Review. He's a recipient of an artist’s scholarship from the Utah Division of Arts and Museums and he has some stuff in/forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Terrain.org, Weber—The Contemporary West, Verse Daily and elsewhere. He would like to meet your dog.