Kristen Lindquist

Artistic License

In the old photo, two baby boys, side-by-side in a basket in the orchard grass, their apple-round faces, each wrapped in his own blanket. Born just a few weeks apart, they are the children of the well-known American artist Rockwell Kent with his wife and his mistress. Ever the modernist, Kent had a notion of the three of them living together with their children, like inhabited planets orbiting his distant star, perhaps supporting each other when he took off for Greenland or Alaska or Tierra del Fuego. 

It lasted about a week.

midnight sun
never really sinking
into sleep

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About the Author

Kristen Lindquist is a frequent book reviewer and the former coordinator of the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. Her books include island (2023, Red Moon Press), which won second place in the 2024 HSA Merit Book Awards, and It Always Comes Back, winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press eChapbook Award. She lives in Midcoast Maine. kristenlindquist.com/blog.

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