THIEVES IN THE FAMILY appear by day and night in gardens, dreams, encounters with the dead whose spirits transcend the web and weft of time. These poetic vignettes are captured with a cinematographer's eye, laced with a love of dialogue, and an endless fascination with stories heard on subways, planes, in kitchens, and in foreign countries. Corridors of arrivals and departures bring together a seemingly disparate cast of colorful and rich characters who have more in common than one would think - a collection of postcards from working-class Queens to the Global Village.

In a quietly seductive voice Lisella takes the reader on journey after journey, to exotic locales like Havana, Venice and Dubrovnik, places steeped in myth and bloodshed. With crystalline descriptions reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop, she mixes the haunted elegance of the old world and the disturbed consumerism of the new. TWO NAKED FEET is brilliantly wired with the tension of paradox. It is about exile and the movement of peoples, the destruction and pastiche of cultures, the chasm between the idealized world and the colloquial one. Lisella writes with depth and simplicity. Her "I" rarely steps outside of the observing eye to become autobiographical, and yet the poems are remarkable for their passion.--STEPHANIE DICKINSON, Award-winning author of HALF GIRL and ROAD OF FIVE CHURCHES