In this poem, James McKenna gives us a moment when the past is suddenly brought close. An experience from childhood is brought back and transformed. Maybe this suggests that time itself is fluid, is a kind of puzzle whose many pieces constantly shift, break apart and reform. The family in this poem is broken and reassembled, people moving and finding themselves in new places. But what a resourceful mother–giving her children a way to put things together, to make something whole out of the brokenness, a way of seeing something timeless beyond hard times.
James McKenna served for thirty-three years as a Maine Assistant Attorney General, then in 2008 earned an MFA in poetry from the low-residency Bennington Writing Seminars. In 2012, Moon Pie Press published his collection of law-related poems, The Common Law, and his second book of poems, One Day in One Town (2019).
—Betsy Sholl, Maine Arts Journal Poetry Editor
The History of Art
Between 1995 when she
was seven and 1999,
they moved six times.
There was no father
no child support so
they moved themselves.
Before unpacking,
even before heating up their
traditional canned chili,
her mother started
a large jigsaw puzzle,
always at least a 1000 pieces,
always classical art.
It would take her father’s place
at the dinner table.
And while her mother cooked
she’d fit in a few pieces.
Years later, in college,
she found the puzzles again,
in her text The History of Art:
“Starry Night” (easy),
“The Lady of Shalott” (hard),
“Arnolfini and His Bride” (really hard,
but her favorite).
Image at top: MasterPieces Puzzle Company, Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.