Derrick Austin
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paradiselaust.bsky.social
Derrick Austin
@paradiselaust.bsky.social
1.4K followers 500 following 850 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.
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 · 2d
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 · 22d
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
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Zhuzhed up my website, now with an updated bio and preorder link to my forthcoming book This Elegance. More good news to come!

derricklynnaustin.wixsite.com/authorpage/a...
About Me | Derrick Austin
Website for writer and critic Derrick Austin.
derricklynnaustin.wixsite.com
December 2, 2025 at 7:50 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
To Have and Have Not
The Big Sleep
The Mastermind
December 2, 2025 at 3:02 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
The Second Beautiful Harvest by Dante Micheaux
The Second Beautiful Harvest by Dante Micheaux I wake in the golden belly of this abode and sense some diurnal grace at work. I take my body to the fall, to bathe and anoint my genitals with shea. I have made my journey to the cold hills to commune with my people there. I come for the second beautiful harvest and have waited long to look into its eye. The harvest hosts libations, the meal and my desire-so I drink the deep heady liquid of its languid stare, under the hum of many voices: burgeoning friendships and reunion in the low light. I break into the soft weirdness of injera and dip my fingers into the meat stew, to celebrate the glory of the kings. The clear splendor of the serving boy, his slow blink as of a camel, does not distract me-here to reap but seduced by the second beautiful harvest.
November 30, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
boa-editions.bsky.social
LAST CALL to submit your manuscript for consideration for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize! Submittable closes tomorrow- don't wait!

🎯 Prize Details:
- Winning manuscript published by BOA Editions in Spring 2027
- $1,000 honorarium
November 29, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
catacalypto.bsky.social
A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:
"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”
November 29, 2025 at 6:10 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Knives Out 3 lets Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig read like two men in a Caillebotte painting. A good movie
November 29, 2025 at 8:26 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Lessening by Linda Gregg
"Lessening" Linda Gregg Without even looking in the album I realized suddenly, two months later, you had stolen the picture of me, The one in color in the Greek waves. After you had hurt me so much, how could you also take the picture from me of a time before I knew you? When I was with Jack. Steal the small proof that once Tlived well, was loved and beautiful.
November 17, 2025 at 5:07 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
a troupe of bodybuilder drag queens called the dumb belles
November 11, 2025 at 8:55 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Galleys for This Elegance will be available in the next few weeks. Let me know if you're interested in reviewing or teaching the book and I'll get one sent your way 💜
paradiselaust.bsky.social 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.
November 6, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
readalittlepoem.bsky.social
Today’s poem is selected by Derrick Austin (@Paradiselaust) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Raising a Humid Flag” appeared in At Redbones by Thylias Moss, published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1990. Shared here with deep gratitude.
August 7, 2025 at 2:02 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Glad to be back in APR: this time with an essay about Robert Hayden's ekphrastic poems.
ampoetryreview.bsky.social The American Poetry Review @ampoetryreview.bsky.social · Oct 31
Our November/December issue is out now! Check out fresh new work from Devon Walker-Figueroa, Sharon Olds, Derrick Austin, Traci Brimhall, and many more at aprweb.org, and grab the in-print version via 🔗 in bio. And be sure to pre-order Devon's excellent new book Lazarus Species from @milkweed_books
November 4, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Reposted by Derrick Austin
lawrenceschimel.bsky.social
#poetrycommunity #poetry #booksky
paradiselaust.bsky.social 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.
November 4, 2025 at 3:31 PM