~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Terri Kirby Erickson

Granny’s Royal Ruby Red Vases

Granny’s pair of prize vases, the color of old

blood, sit on top of a bookshelf in my

house. They cannot get used to me. There

are no gray braids pinned to my head,

no pinch of snuff between my lip and gum.

My hands are soft instead

of calloused, and smell of citrus lotion, not

the milk cow’s warm teats nor

the earthy scent of heavy soil. And worse

than that, they have lost their primo

placement on Granny’s mantle. How these

two vases with their ruffled tops

and fragile, depression glass bodies, survived

the journey from Granny to Grandmother,

to Mother and to me, is an heirloom

miracle. Yet, here they are, looking down

at me as I write—both in mourning

for their original owner, who didn’t buy them

because they might one day be valuable

and they are not. She just loved their

jewel-colored glow in sunlight and firelight,

how smooth they are to the touch and nearly

weightless—nothing like that square-

mouth shovel in the shed with its rough-

hewn shaft, the dirt from chicken-scratched,

cow-stomped ground clinging to its dull,

utilitarian blade.

Terri Kirby Erickson is a native North Carolinian and the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including Night Talks (Press 53, 2023). Among her honors and awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and many others. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Aethlon, Atlanta Review, ONE ART, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and numerous other publications.