Charlotte Trumble - As If Wisconsin

Charlotte Trumble’s “As If Wisconsin” is poem which bristles with wildness, history, setting, and the narrator’s own roots. From the opening lines there is a tension in the form of the bear and the dark mysterious fluids staining its tongue, and the tension only builds with the harsh fundamentalist eyes of the narrator’s uncle, ticks drinking blood, bridges, and gravel roads. This is a poem which is alive, firmly rooted in the landscape and history of Wisconsin, but close enough to anyone of us who reads these lines that we feel the coarseness of black fur, can hear the rivers roaring beneath the bridges, can smell the heady odor of cut pine. “Some people find comfort in nature, considering it synonymous with quiet and solitude; however, I tend to think they aren’t listening closely enough,” Charlotte informed The Dewdrop. She continued, “Nature is simultaneously rigid and volatile, harsh and nurturing. It is this combination of restraint and chaos that I hoped to capture in order to examine the relationships in my own life.”

As If Wisconsin

Black bear with mouth like a quarry – shreds
Of berry and something darker seeping
Geode splotches down his tongue. If I look
Long enough, I see my uncle’s eyes
Like heirlooms that I must pass,
Hereditary, biblical: blind
Man, carpenter with hand-
Saw and hackney cuts
Of white pine and tamarack.
This place is Ansel, iron, tick-drawn
Blood thicker than the current beneath
Three bridges; Algonquin, Ojibwe,
Menominee. All gravel roads lead to
Marinette: black fur, crackled spine.

Charlotte Trumble

Charlotte Trumble is a poet and pianist from Mequon, Wisconsin. She studied at Lawrence University, where she fueled her penchant for pondering and musicking. Raised among chestnut trees and Shetland sheep, her poems focus on the relationships we forge, the power dynamics those relationships employ, and the ways in which our behavior is mirrored in the natural world.