The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: The Pink I Must Have Worn by Scarlett Peterson

This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from The Pink I Must Have Worn by Scarlett Peterson (Kelsay Books 2023).

Though I Do Not Have Wings

I am deciding, today, how it will feel to be disowned.
A black and blue butterfly lands in paint run-off
from the small house. The house and grass now the color
of a robin’s egg,
or a chicken’s.
The now-gone chickens laid
that shade of blue, laid brown.

Houseflies shine blue-green

in the sun and

vomit every time they land.

One hen flew over the coop’s fence each afternoon,

the height no great distance to a housefly,
all that a hen could manage.

I should have to travel soon—

Scarlett Peterson is a poet, writer, and high school English teacher based in the Metro Atlanta area. She is the author of The Pink I Must Have Worn (Kelsay Books, 2023). She earned her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2024, and her MFA in 2019 at Georgia College. Her work—spanning poetry, nonfiction, and fiction—has appeared in Moon City Review, The Lavender Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Gargoyle Magazine, Poetry Online, and other literary journals. She is currently at work on a second poetry collection and a memoir.

Joey Gould, who served as Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent > Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), along with transfinity (forthcoming from Lambhouse Books). Their recent work appears in Solstice, Memezine, and Defunkt Magazine’s Surreal Confessional Anthology. They write book reviews as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys, and have also placed reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry and the Sundress blog.