Because in Amy's poetry "captive" covers a wide range of meanings, we struggled a bit finding a cover image, trying and rejecting bars, chains, ropes, and thought about "straight" tiger images. Nothing worked; the images were either too obviously related to "captive," or just not very interesting.

Finally, Amy wrote "Last month I was playing around with watercolor possibilities. This is probably too specific, but I offer it anyway," and sent the tiger -- but not just any tiger. Immediately I knew we had our cover image: strong, recognizable, but not photo-realistic. Notice, at the left, a light switch. It's inside -- why is the tiger inside? -- and there are no bars. The reference is to her poem "Reckless Endangerment," which builds on an actual situation in which a man kept a tiger loose in his apartment.

At one point I cropped the light switch out, but put it back in because its presence gives a "what the heck is going on here?" feel to the image.

There are a few covers based on the author's photograph, but this is only the second based on the author's own artwork.