In this collection, Martelli’s queens range from Geraldine Ferraro to Madonna, Nancy Pelosi to Molly Ringwald. The poems resist gender oppression, political sexism, and threats to reproductive rights while highlighting the strength of women.

Stencil of Kitty Genovese on a Cinderblock Wall

My friend found it first. Does it matter that we have the same name? Neither of us was looking for her; nevertheless, Kitty Genovese’s face appeared one day on that old wall that no one lived or worked behind anymore: the grunge garage, bankrupted, down the street, off the square where it floods all the time from the rains and the rivers that flow deep beneath the ground. There’s something wrong with that area, she said, I don’t like my kids walking there. But she walked there that day and took the photo on her phone of Kitty stenciled on the wall, and asked me, Is this Kitty? Is this who you’re writing about? She was barely formed, barely filled in, except for the contours of her face: the messy bob, the arched brow, oh that beautiful top lip curved. Someone must have projected her from a Kodak carousel, from a single beam shining through a vintage slide. Did I tell you my friend and I have the same name? That I’d been thinking of Kitty for most of the summer? That now we were both haunted?

from My Tarantella by Jennifer Martelli (originally published in Pithead Chapel, Volume 6, Issue 7)