‘Kitty Genovese Names Her Fourteen Wounds’
— Hannah Cohen
A bouquet of asters: so many wounds gathered close. And still: who knows / which one was the fatal one?
It wasn’t that long ago that I first watched The Witness, a documentary that follows the brother of Kitty Genovese in his attempts to demystify and solve the mysteries about his sister’s murder. What his journey revealed was what we knew all along—Kitty was a real woman, a truth that Jennifer Martelli also explores in her poem. With colors described as “first amber”, “new moon sky”, and a “single blue oculus”, we are dragged into the scene of the murder. Especially powerful is that ending line, “a woman calling kitty, kitty, kitty”. Martelli’s poem doesn’t give into the urban legend, and refuses to let the reader stand by like an apathetic eyewitness.