Derrick Austin
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paradiselaust.bsky.social
Derrick Austin
@paradiselaust.bsky.social
1.4K followers 500 following 870 posts
Author: THIS ELEGANCE (Spring 2026), TENDERNESS, and TROUBLE THE WATER (BOA Editions) | Wannabe Art Historian | He/Him

📍Chicago

https://linktr.ee/DerrickAustin
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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · Oct 23
My third book, This Elegance, is out from @boa-editions.bsky.social in May 2026.

Cover design by Sandy Knight with art by Diedrick Brackens.

Available to preorder now 🙏🏿
The book cover for Derrick Austin's third book of poetry, This Elegance. A detail from a weaving by Diedrick Brackens. A kneeling silhouette poses against a yellow moon. The silhouette holds a long red candle in one hand and balances one small red candle on his head and two small candles on his other arm and one yellow candle on the heel of his foot.
Reposted by Derrick Austin
paradiselaust.bsky.social
If you haven’t preordered This Elegance from @boa-editions.bsky.social, there’s still plenty of time! You can also preorder from your favorite local bookstore or library.

www.boaeditions.org/collections/...
This Elegance
Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione (“sacred conversation”), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine ...
www.boaeditions.org
January 9, 2026 at 7:15 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
An early January poem from Tenderness, nearly a decade old
January 2017 by Derrick Austin You are the safest child in the world, I say to plastic Jesus in the nativity. My Facebook timeline is a villanelle of suffering: the boy from Aleppo whose dust-skin is the color of water pouring, still, from faucets in Flint. Drunk, recovering from last year, my eyes are wet moonflowers. Christmastide is over. No carolers approach the well-lit houses. No one knocks on a stranger's door. And who would admit them?
January 11, 2026 at 4:45 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
All the Emplate lore. My traumatized king!
January 9, 2026 at 9:35 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Need to jump back into watching movies but I’ve been in such a doldrums since the year began
January 9, 2026 at 8:36 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Copies of This Elegance arrived at my apt yesterday!
January 9, 2026 at 7:13 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
The fact that its felt like spring these past two days…in January…in Chicago…
January 9, 2026 at 6:22 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
An exciting write-up for This Elegance!
A picture of the cover of Derrick Austin’s forthcoming poetry collection, This Elegance, which will be published by Boa Editions in May 2026. This is part of a feature for anticipated poetry collections. There is an elegance to Derrick Austin’s work itself, evident from his memorable debut collection Trouble the Water (2016) on, and I am delighted every time I stumble across one of his poems in a magazine. In Austin’s third collection, readers can expect his trademark gorgeously crystalline lyrics interspersed with more conversational wanderings, capturing new stages of life. “After a Year Sober,” reminds me of how Austin’s ekphrastic leanings stand out through his descriptive particularities, even as at the end he reaches outward into a memorable dual final figure: “like house music pulsing in the gay bar // where I learned to love my ungraceful limbs / or like the tinny bells used in monasteries / for prayer to call the body back to the body.”
January 6, 2026 at 8:30 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Heavy Summer Rain by Jane Kenyon
Heavy Summer Rain Jane Kenyon - 1947-1995 The grasses in the field have toppled, and in places it seems that a large, now absent, animal must have passed the night. The hay will right itself if the day turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully. None of your blustering entrances or exits, doors swinging wildly on their hinges, or your huge unconscious sighs when you read something sad, like Henry Adams's letters from Japan, where he traveled after Clover died. Everything blooming bows down in the rain: white irises, red peonies; and the poppies with their black and secret centers lie shattered on the lawn.
January 6, 2026 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
shakespeare.lol
all of this
mobydickatsea.bsky.social Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 8d
all this is both foolish and unnecessary
January 4, 2026 at 10:11 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
therumpus.net/2025/12/31/o...
“One Consolidated Gasp:” A Conversation with Rickey Laurentiis - The Rumpus
“I remember there was a moment, where I would write a poem, and I would put it immediately on Instagram. And it was just that gesture of extending a hand, and it wasn’t about the poem, it wasn’t for p...
therumpus.net
January 4, 2026 at 6:05 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Some movies I loved that I watched for the first time last year 🍿✨
Fave first-watches of 2025 Identikit (1974) dir. Giuseppe Patroni Griffi The Big Sleep (1946) dir. Howard Hawks Gothika (2003) dir. Mathieu Kassovitz The Naked Kiss (1964) dir. Samuel Fuller Enemy (2013) dir. Denis Villeneuve Certified Copy (2010) dir. Abbas Kiarostami Close-Up (1990) dir. Abbas Kiarostami Lawrence of Arabia (1962) dir. David Lean L’Innocente (1976) dir. Luchino Visconti Autumn Leaves (1956) dir. Robert Aldrich Barbarella (1968) dir. Roger Vadim Paper Moon (1973) dir. Peter Bogdanovich Wild Things (1998) dir. John McNaughton The Last Picture Show (1971) dir. Peter Bogdanovich Party Girl (1995) dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer Death on the Nile (1978) dir. John Guillermin Floating Weeds (1959) dir. Yasujirō Ozu The Childhood of a Leader (2015) dir. Brady Corbet The Hand (2004) dir. Wong Kar Wai
January 3, 2026 at 2:00 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
The Last of Sheila
Identikit
Tenet
December 31, 2025 at 11:39 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
I have a prose poem about a Corot painting in the tenth anniversary issue of wilderness. This poem is part of a project about ekphrasis I’m beginning to work on.
The title of a prose poem by Derrick Austin: A Question about Art Rome from the Pincio Camille Corot 1826-1827 Oil on canvas At a potluck, early on when everything but the wine glasses were clean, unpicked cheese sweating on plastic plates, small talk agitating the air, someone cornered me with: "If you could own any painting, what would it be?" They meant a famous painting or a painting by someone famous-to keep the conversation moving. To hang in my bedroom or beside my writing desk. This is why I don't have tattoos. Imagine having to look at an image forever, I could have said. Instead I launched: "I saw once, in Dublin, during a year my spirit felt arid and pinched from grief, a perfect picture by Corot. It inspired in me what people used to call covetousness, and not because it was priceless or important. There are certain small pictures that you can feel yourself turning into a squint to look at-leaning tensely forward-but this one invites you to step naturally to it, so warm yet elusive is its light. Has it just hinished raining— in summer or tall? Morning or dusk? Is the mood obscure, sad, serious, pious, wistful, plaintive, magnificent, or joyful? Saint Peter's isn't actually visible from there, nor the green slopes and earth-tone city. The stone pine on the right has a knobby trunk and shadowy canopy and thick, wavy branches. Its companion catches the wind in whooshing leaves. A priest listens to four streams pour from a wide basin. The hill looks like a place to meet an old friend or long for one."
December 30, 2025 at 3:41 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Purr 💅🏿
mobydickatsea.bsky.social Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 16d
we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that’s our first love
December 28, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
boa-editions.bsky.social
Time is running out for our special BOGO 50% off holiday sale at Boa! With the holiday rapidly approaching, purchase the perfect gift for the book lovers in your life by hopping on to our website and using the code BOGO50 at check out!🎅 📚

#booksale #holidaysale #poetrysale #fictionsale
December 23, 2025 at 5:03 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
New work by Lisa Hiton in The Swannanoa Review!

www.theswannanoareview.com/issue5/lisah...?
Lisa Hiton - You Are Not the Sheriff — The Swannanoa Review
www.theswannanoareview.com
December 23, 2025 at 8:16 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Either/Or is a new literary journal out of UW-Whitewater, and it’s inaugural issue is now published! I’m glad to have three poems, including this one, in such a beautiful issue. Keep your eyes out for this journal and consider sending some work their way!
Ballad by Derrick Austin Another man bleeds on his knees. Lifted to his floor in a mirrored box, I had three faces like the devil. Our phones translated small talk. My desires are not high-minded. Sweat grew and fell. We smelled each other's pits. Head. Spit. Split lip. I nicked his wallet and shirt.
December 22, 2025 at 9:47 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Ah yes, my favorite day in December. Time to rewatch two of my favorite movies.
A screenshot from the movie Carol showing a planner on the day December 21 with the following notes scribbled on the page: Carol Aird Seventh Ave entrance 2 PM Dev Patel as Gawain in the film The Green Knight, shirtless and in bed and looking bewildered, hears someone outside this scene say It is December the 21st.
December 21, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Ode to the Maggot by Yusef Komunyakaa
Ode to the Maggot by Yusef Komunyakaa Brother of the blowfly & godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork & flophouses. Yes, you Go to the root of all things. You are sound & mathematical. Jesus Christ, you're merciless With the truth. Ontological & lustrous, You cast spells on beggars & kings Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb Or split trench in a field of ragweed. No decree or creed can outlaw you As you take every living thing apart. Little Master of earth, no one gets to heaven Without going through you first.
December 9, 2024 at 6:18 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Black Beans by Essex Hemphill
Black Beans by Essex Hemphill Times are lean, Pretty Baby, the beans are burnt to the bottom of the battered pot. Let’s make fierce love on the overstuffed hand-me-down sofa. We can burn it up, too. Our hungers will evaporate like-money. I smell your lust, not the pot burnt black with tonight’s meager meal. So we can’t buy flowers for our table. Our kisses are petals, our tongues caress the bloom. Who dares to tell us we are poor and powerless? We keep treasure any king would count as dear. Come on, Pretty Baby. Our souls can’t be crushed like cats crossing streets too soon. Let the beans burn all night long. Our chipped water glasses are filled with wine from our loving. And the burnt black beans— caviar.
December 16, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
prajxl.bsky.social
*smiles in homosexuality*
December 12, 2025 at 12:47 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Thrilled to have two poems from This Elegance in the latest issue of Cortland Review. I challenged myself to write about an animal (since I don't typically) and ended up writing about a giant phantom jellyfish 🦑
Giant Phantom Jellyfish by Derrick Austin You misunderstand my nature. I am practical. I sweep my oral arms over hydrothermal vents. What's it like being discordant internally and with your world? Is it because you live on something that your kind can be so distracted, divided? I'll let you in on a secret: because we emerge fully formed from the brood chamber I suppose we're like a unified mind without a death drive or dreams.
December 11, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
reggieh.bsky.social
I know this feeling. I look around, confused, then realize 'Oh, sh*t - I'm happy 😊 How did *this* happen?'

Thank you Jane Kenyon and @paradiselaust.bsky.social
paradiselaust.bsky.social Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · Dec 8
The Suitor by Jane Kenyon
The Suitor by Jane Kenyon We lie back to back. Curtains lift and fall, like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; they show their light undersides, turning all at once like a school of fish. Suddenly I understand that I am happy. For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping for short visits, like a timid suitor.
December 8, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
kawaishen.bsky.social
A rich collection on god, race, sex, the south...
Cover of Trouble the Water by Derrick Austin featuring 10-79 by Diedrick Brackens, hand woven blue, orange and green fabric with red splotches made of nylon, chenille and hand dyed cotton. Tidewater Psalm "... in heaven it is always Autumn" - John Donne, Christmas Sermon, 1624 By sunset, the crickets' trilling begins in the airless damp, rich with salt and the sulfurous fumes the Gulf flags off. Bristling cattails brush my hands. The light-crested water rises and falls like a chest flecked with blonde hairs. I feel estranged from You. A shoal of minnows breaks, silvering my ankles, like a mirror; my heart swims in gladness at the changeable world. Tell me in heaven it's warm enough to wade into this fine transparence, never want for air, only light and water, and be as the river flowing into the sea which gives up its name.
November 13, 2025 at 11:45 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
The Suitor by Jane Kenyon
The Suitor by Jane Kenyon We lie back to back. Curtains lift and fall, like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; they show their light undersides, turning all at once like a school of fish. Suddenly I understand that I am happy. For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping for short visits, like a timid suitor.
December 8, 2025 at 4:32 PM