Collaborators’ Q&A: Writer Christopher Citro: The trapdoors and the ladders strictly speaking aren’t in the poem, and that’s wonderful! It makes the poem-plus-image a new object all its own. Artist Amy Meissner: My son painted the main watercolor wash when he was 3. He’s now 6. It’s been on the wall for a few years and I wanted to use it as a background for something new.

Writer Christopher Citro’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Poetry East, Arts & Letters Prime, Fourteen Hills, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, The Cortland Review, Harpur Palate, Faultline, Permafrost, and elsewhere. Artist Amy Meissner is a writer and children’s book illustrator living in Anchorage, Alaska.