The Pink I Must Have Worn

Scarlett Peterson's debut collection, The Pink I Must Have Worn, is haunted and haunting. Through sharp and luscious lyricism, this intimate portrayal transforms the speaker's dead and disowned into a heartbreaking catharsis as she explores the thin boundaries between desire and addiction, silence and abandonment. Formally varied, vivid, and visceral, these poems disclose the betrayals of a traumatic childhood, but also arrive at stunning moments of compassion, erotic beauty, and the grace of nourishment offered in love. In doing so, she reveals the synchronicity between the past and present, as she does in the poem, "Metaphors": "Go back to the gentle, gentle creaking of the bars. If you close your eyes long enough you're still swinging."

-Danielle Cadena Deulen, author of Desire Museum



Scarlett Peterson's debut collection, The Pink I Must Have Worn, is a deeply moving reckoning with family grief, lineage, love, and violence. These are courageous, hauntingly honest, and commendable poems. Peterson artfully renders the heart-wrenching subject matter and ultimately offers the reader an experience of transformation, acceptance, and a genuine recreating of selfhood.

-Andrea Jurjevic, author of Nightcall