Kraig Keller is a poet and visual artist originally from Cleveland, OH who currently resides in Richmond, VA. Both places impact his work, and he incorporates themes found in his recent widowhood which include growth, loss, grief, personal relationships with women, perseverance, and a blue collar upbringing.  He has been invited to read at several Richmond events such as Poetry Fest, 1708 Gallery, and Bon Air Book Fest and contributes work to River City Poets, Strangely Spoken, Commonwealth Poetry, Poems for People, and Chesterfield Poetry Collective. He studied Arts and Architecture at Penn State University as well as Lakeland Community College. 

Looking up on a down day, I find

the moon and clouds to be the same ghostly white;

Chalk, Isabelline, bone;

Is this an accident? They are both faded spirits;

Perhaps everything made of vapor is the same 

tint?

I wasn’t sure if this poem was going to be

an aubade or an elegy

or another fancy type I hadn’t yet heard of 

but which I would be impressed if I did

in whatever language it happened to 

appear.

I pay a toll to a highway named after a hillbilly insult and

throttle the pavement home. Once there, I pour 

out the last ounce of her favorite liqueur, 

pomegranate. No co-conspirators 

this year, I was mute on the subject.

Do their calendars not have limp scratchings on them like mine?

‘Worst Day’ and ‘Second Worst’, 

one right after another?

Let’s forget the Third. Perhaps

the import is different to them,

no longer wishing to mark the silence with klaxons to imitate her?

no longer wishing for ‘why’?

no longer wishing.

Would she be surprised to know the pomegranate

bore the same ivory flesh, the same

loose crimson machinery, the same

sweet claret hemoglobin as what she left

on the tarp that night

singing into the dark of April?

The famous red of her meeting 

the short, steel scarmaker of her weapon. In the morning,

the air bristled with frost blossoms and the prairie was in 

no mood for noise.

And so I wrote a dirge, downed 

my brew with a slight grimace, hoped 

she sipped her angel’s share and gently       

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