Naked Beside Fish locates itself firmly in the mystery of what lies between: between poetry and art, words and silence, the minutia of daily life and the infinite expansion of the cosmos. In this surreal space, inner and outer landscapes mirror and converge in surprising ways. Playfully structured around a museum exhibit, this ekphrastic chapbook takes us from art studios to camping under stars, from making mud soup at a children's museum to picking out paint colors in the kitchen. There is even an imagined art gallery translated into words, featuring paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and Chagall, as well as a "gift shop" appendix. With exquisite use of metaphor, color, and imagery, these poems pierce the heart, tunneling beneath the surface of life's canvas to name the emotions lurking beneath. The poet's background as a feminist scholar is evident here, daring to confront the challenges of solo parenting while exploring the complexities of the female body as simultaneous subject and object of a painter's gaze.
