Elizabeth Tannen: Origin Story

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Origin Story

The sounds on the floor

when you were born

smelled like grease and

grief but you only heard

shine and girl. In the next

room a woman with white

hair and pink nails

remembered how she

slept in Poland

when it was called Russia.

Your own grandmother stood

in a Manhattan kitchen and ate

one walnut at a time.

A voice inscribed itself

in ancient tongues, between

crevices of spoken crumbs—

keep crawling, it commanded

but you heard don’t go down.

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Elizabeth Tannen is a multi-genre writer, editor, teacher, anti-racism facilitator, organizer and activist. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York and have lived for the last five years in south Minneapolis. Elizabeth's essays, stories and poems have appeared in places like NPR, Salon, The Rumpus, The Morning News, Front Porch, Copper Nickel and Southern Humanities Review.  In 2018, her poetry manuscript, Notes on Distance, was one of five finalists for Milkweed Editions Lindquist & Vennum Prize.