Piggies
by Lore Sjöberg

The One Who Went To Market
The tragically anonymous author of "This Little Piggy (The Toe-Wiggling Rhyme)" certainly knew how to draw the reader in. Immediately we're presented with the intriguing image of a piggy -- a little piggy -- going to market. Why would a piggy go to market? And how? Is it supporting local merchants or taking advantage of the chain stores' low prices? The scene is set. The die is cast. The pig, as they say, is shopping. B-

The One Who Stayed Home
Immediately our attention is ripped away and fastened to another pig entirely. The sharp contrast between the piggy-at-market and the piggy-at-home evokes the Apollonian/Dionysian split, at least among those of us who took Literature classes in community college. But is it too much, too soon? By eschewing traditional narrative in favor of a series of allegorical tableaus, isn't the author robbing us of the chance to understand the piggies qua piggies? C-

The One Who Had Roast Beef
At last we reach, you'll please restrain from tracking me down and sneering at me for saying, the meat of the story. In a single master-stroke, in the vivid juxtaposition of meat animal and meat, the author manages to create the most compelling yet disturbing nursery rhyme image since four-and-twenty blackbird corpses started singing. Eat your heart out, George Orwell. A-

The One Who Had None
At this point the Muse seems to have taken the last Greyhound out of town and the poet is left to try and pull together the frayed edges of the work into a completed opus. If this were a modern nursery rhyme, the author might have been able to transcend the tyrannical paradigm of songs with "endings," and two toes would have been left unpinched in the name of Art. Instead, the author employs a cheap parallel to the piggy who did not go to market by sticking us with a piggy who did not eat roast beef. D

The One Who Went "Wee Wee Wee"
From a critical standpoint, the denouement of the piggy saga leaves much to be desired. To begin with, a previous line already ended with "home." But truly great poets are able to create a resonant whole from the most unlikely parts, and so it with with "This Little Piggy." For all the flaws, the work illuminates a universal human truth: grabbing someone's pinky toe and going "wee wee wee" is fun. B+