Beth Tornes
CONTACT:
Email: bethtornes@gmail.com
Website: elizabethtornes.com
BIO:
Elizabeth Tornes has published four award-winning poetry collections, Northern Skies which won Third Prize in the 2023 WFOP 2023 Chapbook Prize (Muriel Press, 2022), Between the Dog and the Wolf (Five Oaks Press, 2016), New Moon (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and Snowbound (Giiwedin Press, 2011). She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Colony for the Arts. Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies, including The American Poetry Journal, The Antigonish Review, Boulevard, Illuminations, Main Street Rag, The Missouri Review, North American Review, Poetry Daily, and Ploughshares. She has also published a collection of Ojibwe oral histories, “Memories of Lac du Flambeau Elders” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). She lives in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin.
PUBLICATIONS:
Northern Skies, Muriel Press, 2022.
Between the Dog and the Wolf, Five Oaks Press, 2016.
New Moon, Finishing Line Press, 2013.
Snowbound, Giiwedin Press, 2011.
Poetry
Birds Speak Indian
for Celia DeFoe, Waabanangagokweban
Like you, the birds speak
the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe
they have spoken for centuries.
Did you teach the birds the language
or did their voices in the woods
teach you, the Anishinaabeg, how to speak?
Asiginaak whistles a high note
in the reeds that startles us,
his scarlet wing patch blazing.
Gookooko’oo hoots the owl
shouts his name out loud
to the velvety darkness.
Black-capped gijiganenshiinh
chats up the sunrise
on frigid mornings.
White-breasted piipiingenh
peeps as she circles
the maple tree upside down.
All I know is,
when I speak to them
in the Ojibwe you taught me,
they listen carefully--
weweni bizindagoog--
before they speak to me.
The Elders
They are still with us,
waving as oak leaves, roaring
wind through the pines. They echo
as woodpeckers hammering
hollow trees. They insist
that we remember, remember,
remember their stories
and their long-lived lives.
Remember the hand
they gave us when we slipped,
the kind looks and words,
a balm for soothing a heartache.
I miss the grandmothers
who gentled me, who taught me
how to speak, and give to others.
How to go beyond the self
to hear the pulse of barred owls
signifying wisdom,
the high-pitched songs of frogs
that lift the swamp
in the early evening,
the loon’s tremulous call--
the voice of the Creator,
if we would only listen.