Code and Output Follows:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
use Data::Dumper;
use DBI;

my $dbargs = {AutoCommit => 0,PrintError => 1};
my $dbc = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=da_db.db","","",$dbargs);

# get the default po
my $sth = $dbc->prepare('select * from der_pos where poid = '0');
$sth->execute;
my $po = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;

my $tmp = '';

# build a string and add some commas
while ( my ($key, $value) = each(%$po)) {
           if ($tmp) { $tmp = $tmp . ' , ';}
           $tmp = $tmp . "$key => " . (($value) ? qq("$value")  : q("a"));
}

#print $tmp . "\n";

my %pohash = ();
%hash = ($tmp);
print Dumper(%pohash);

Output Follows:
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at ./test.pl line 25 (#1)
    (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
    which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.

$VAR1 = 'Comments => "a" , InstallAddID => "a" , County => "a" , AribaToID => "a" , AribaFromID => "a" , ProcessStatus => "a" , DeliverToAddID => "a" , HasBadPart => "a" , ShipToCode => "a" , AribaPO => "Default" , DeptidCode => "a" , OrderType => "a" , PODateProcessed => "2010-06-29 10:53:25" , PODate => "a" , ShippingNotes => "a" , RequisitionNum => "a" , Mode => "a" , StoreNumber => "a" , Replaced => "a" , Target => "all" , OrderNotes => "a" , ReqDeliveryDate => "2010-06-29 10:53:25" , Iteration => "a" , LineItemCount => "a" , POID => "a" , JamcoPO => "a" , DebugData => "a" , POTotal => "a"';
$VAR2 = undef;
Issuing rollback() due to DESTROY without explicit disconnect() of DBD::SQLite::db handle dbname=/da_db.db.