Derrick Austin
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paradiselaust.bsky.social
Derrick Austin
@paradiselaust.bsky.social
1.3K followers 490 following 830 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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paradiselaust.bsky.social
Gothika
The Naked Kiss
Night of the Living Dead
Enemy
November 4, 2025 at 2:52 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
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.
October 23, 2025 at 10:14 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Justice for Gothika. This movie is INCREDIBLE
The movie poster for Gothika (2003) starring Halle Berry
October 6, 2025 at 3:59 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Certified Copy
Close-Up
When Marnie Was There
October 2, 2025 at 6:00 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
I’m included in a new anthology focused on poems of labor and work called The Book of Jobs: Poems About Work. Recently out from ONE ART, the anthology is free and available online as a PDF. My poem is a love song to Black, gay couturier Patrick Kelly.
At the Grave of Patrick Kelly by Derrick Austin I want my clothes to make you smile. —Patrick Kelly Bitten by bed bugs, clothes ruined, I ache to scorch the catwalk in your dress of Corvette red kisses. I'd never seen couture like yours, colorful, buoyant, and sage. Don't be sullen in sweet air. Strut, cry your buttons! Twirl, cry your bows! A swishy boy, I'd spin an antique globe my mother bought for me from the thrift store and where my finger landed was the place I could be happy. You, too, gave me a world to imagine without dullness or ignorance. Your epitaph is legible and clean. Blazing star, a metrocard, chrysanthemum, a pot of mint-On this fifth day of the fifth month, I promise not to get lost again when I return properly with a gift.
September 2, 2025 at 5:53 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Lawrence of Arabia
L’Innocente
The Heiress
Rebecca
A still from David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, an epic love story between two men played by Peter O'Toole and an impossibly hot Omar Sharif A still from Luchino Visconti's final film L’Innocente A still from the The Heiress starring Olivia de Haviland A still of Mrs. Danvers and the Second Mrs. De Winter in Hitchcock's Rebecca
September 1, 2025 at 11:36 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
A Double Feature
Movie poster for The Bostonians (1984) Movie poster for Down with Love (2003)
August 26, 2025 at 2:56 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Radioactive shrimp, zombie squirrels, rabbits with tentacles growing out of their faces…just another Tuesday in America
What the hell, sure.
August 19, 2025 at 7:16 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Want to finish watching The Heiress (loving it) but I’m falling asleep
August 18, 2025 at 6:50 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
I’m assembling a team
Willem Defoe as Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate Oscar Isaac as Paul Gauguin in At Eternity’s Gate John Leguizamo as Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge! Jake Gyllenhaal as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George
August 17, 2025 at 2:49 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Excited to have a poem from This Elegance in the latest @voicemailpoems.bsky.social. Follow the link below to hear me read it as well as read and listen to the other fab poems in the summertime issue!
Sunday Tea by Derrick Austin I studied Italian painters, Giorgione, Titian. At one job, I'm a glorified secretary. I answer the phone in my professional voice and sell gaudy urns to luxe addresses. My neighbor listens patiently, amused by my young life. We're the only Black gay men in our building, so he has me over for Sunday tea. I fill our cups. For the heart, he says, adding whiskey to his. In the 80s, on a fellowship in Spain, he practiced arias and translated Romani ballads. After a concert, he presented Leontyne Price with flowers wrapped in sheer blue paper. Today, I argue Another Country is Baldwin's best novel. My neighbor shares a recipe for chicken paprikash. Gone like that, he says, flipping through an album of friends in their youth with fades and thick mustaches. They could quote Mahogany. They cut up in the house-inflected dark of a dancefloor, worldly and glamorous as a Venetian painting. I refill our cups. A splash of whiskey in his tea.
August 15, 2025 at 4:01 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Le Bonheur
Winter Light
Snow Trail
A Place in the Sun
August 8, 2025 at 8:54 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Movie posters for: A Place in the Sun, Winter Light, Le Bonheur, and Snow Trail
August 1, 2025 at 2:12 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
“I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me.”
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s painting Ecce Agnus Dei
July 25, 2025 at 5:05 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Real af
July 25, 2025 at 5:03 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
My boy being an incredible poet and a terrible dad lmao
Henry Fuseli’s painting Milton Dictating to His Daughter
July 25, 2025 at 5:03 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Baby that’s Post Malone
July 25, 2025 at 5:01 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
July 23, 2025 at 10:08 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
An excerpt from an interview with Dionne Brand in which she says of poems that one must ask: “What is the jangle you're trying to make of all the things people already know? What is the new arrangement?" "For me, the line is the most crucial unit of a poem. It hovers. It is full in its proposition"
July 22, 2025 at 3:18 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Taking Myself to The Frick
The Portrait of Philip IV in Fraga by Diego Velazquez Girl Interrupted at Her Music by Vermeer The Portal of Valenciennes by Watteau Mistress and Maid by Vermeer
July 18, 2025 at 12:54 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Will I ever find a steady paycheck? Does such a thing still exist?
July 17, 2025 at 12:06 AM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
All I know is my man better win that Emmy
Emmy nominated Severance actor Tramell Tillman shirtless, smiling, and looking sexy as hell wearing blue swim trunks in the sea.
July 15, 2025 at 9:43 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Showing up with my resume like
A still of Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath and Anna Paquin as Ada’s daughter Flora from Jane Campion’s The Piano. They are on a beach in New Zealand. Flora sits upon the piano looking toward the offing.
July 13, 2025 at 10:46 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
I went to The Met early this morning so whole swaths of it were empty.
A view from a distance of one of Monet’s Water Lily paintings with other Impressionist paintings in the background. A gallery of Manet paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art A room of Italian Baroque paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art A room of Baroque Italian paintings with a small bronze statue of mythological figures on an elaborate table.
July 13, 2025 at 4:05 PM
paradiselaust.bsky.social
Remembered Ruth Negga didn’t win the Oscar for Passing
Meme of Wendy Williams dissociating
July 10, 2025 at 1:00 AM