Collaborators’ Q&A:Artist Caleb Brown: This poem hit me hard because I have been the narrator. As my sons grew up, I’ve mulled responding to the simple tragedy of trying to excel in parenting and work simultaneously. Poet John Paul Davis: I think when I wrote the poem I imagined this is what the parent says giving the office tour, but now I see it can also be read as an argument against bringing the child at all.

Artist Caleb Brown paints and makes comic art and used to work on software experiences. He lives in Massachusetts. John Paul Davis is a poet, musician and programmer. His first book is Crown Prince Of Rabbits.

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Collaborators’s Q&A: Poet Jennifer Perrine: I was just over two weeks into sheltering at home when I saw the “Sense of Home” prompts in my inbox. I’m not sure I can adequately describe the glee and gratitude I felt when I read them, especially the Beautiful Outlaw prompt. I had been trying to write about the chaos and disorientation of those early days when I first recognized the severity of the pandemic, and hadn’t had much luck…. Artist Michele L’Heureux: I love how nuanced and tender the poem is, how it uses a capsule of daily life for two people in love as a vehicle to convey the complexity of our current times.  It is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching at the same time.

Poet Jennifer Perrine is the author of three books of poetry: The Body Is No Machine; In the Human Zoo; and No Confession, No Mass, winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Artist Michele L’Heureux is an artist and bird fanatic who works as a digital designer for a medical software company.

Read the full Q&A and get the Broadside