Trommer, Rosemerry Wahtola

United States, (b. 1969)

From Pigs to the Dogs

  1. Priscilla the visayan warty pig
  2. has learned to dig with a tool.
  3. She digs with her nose, like all
  4.  
  5. other pigs, but then she’ll pick
  6. up a stick or a scrap of bark
  7. and use it to dig a hole.
  8.  
  9. It’s unprecedented—a pig
  10. using a tool. And it gives me hope
  11. that I, too, might evolve to acquire
  12.  
  13. something new—for instance,
  14. an ability to understand sarcasm—
  15. without which, studies say, I seem naive.
  16.  
  17. Sarcasm, experts say, is most used
  18. amongst people we love, despite the fact
  19. that it comes from the Greek,
  20. “to tear off flesh like dogs.”
  21. Even a computer can comprehend
  22. that sarcasm’s a tool for telling
  23.  
  24. true lies. So why am I so sincere?
  25. Why does my right hemisphere not know
  26. when “yeah, right” really means, “no way?”
  27.  
  28. Oh Priscilla, you inspiring visayan warty pig,
  29. if you can evolve beyond your nature,
  30. do you think perhaps I might? Yeah, right.

 Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. A Hundred Falling Veils Blog, October 7, 2019.  https://ahundredfallingveils.com/.

About the Poet:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, United States, (b. 1969), is a poet, storyteller and writer about the creative potential. She earned her MA in English Language & Linguistics at University of Wisconsin, Madison. In Colorado she served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate (2007-2011) and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017). In 2019 she was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate.

She is the author of many collection of poetry, including Hush (2020), which won the Halcyon Prize; Naked for Tea (2018), a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award; and The Less I Hold (2016), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

Devoted to helping others explore their creative potential, Rosemerry is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process (with Christie Aschwanden), co-director of Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club (with Art Goodtimes) and co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (with Sherry Richert Belul). She also directed the Telluride Writers Guild for ten years. [DES-07/22]

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

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