Derrick Austin

@paradiselaust

Author: THIS ELEGANCE, TENDERNESS, and TROUBLE THE WATER (BOA Editions) | Art Writer | He/Him 📍Chicago

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Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 6d

@boa-editions.bsky.social has a shiny new website, which means there's a new link to order This Elegance that I'll share below ✨ boaeditions.org/book/this-el...

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 10d

The Gleaners and I Macho Dancer Some Like It Hot The Young Girls of Rochefort

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 11d

it's been a very French July

Movie posters of the last four movies I've watched which include: Jane B by Agnes V, The Gleaners and I, The Invite, and Donkey Skin

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 20d

On her feast day, my Mary Magdalene poem from Tenderness

Black Magdalene by Derrick Austin

In one version of her story,
she left Jerusalem for France

by boat, crossing a patrolled sea.
In France, she contemplated.

She dreamed not of Christ but Her
Ladies. Her Ladies sang. Her Ladies

incised wax tablets. Her Ladies revealed
the length of the gown of God.

She saw Her Ladies in trees,
black women climbing or reclining

on branches, like small, silver blossoms,
and knew them in her heart.

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 21d

I moved to Chicago a year ago. Upheaval and isolation have defined my 30s, and I realized this city has been the first place in a long time I’ve felt even a little settled. Who knows if the winds will send me elsewhere; in the meantime, I like it here.

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· 25d

Inglisero by Kabel Mishka Ligot in the latest issue of @triquarterlymag.bsky.social

Inglisero by Kabel Mishka Ligot

Five years in the belly of the beast and still not
one thread of homesickness.
Big sister, language cannot save me.

I hate fruit. I hate heat. You chide me, jokingly,
you are not a real international because your first language

is English.
At the farmers' market, a woman touches my arm -
What's your story, she asks. I imagine

she imagines a city reduced to rubble, an emergency
visa. A physician grandfather who shredded all his documents

to feign a dumbed
civility to escape.
My grandfather was a doctor. Still is a doctor.

My mother writes copy. My father went to art school
and designs propaganda, as in ads, not wheat paste prints

of factory unions. Instead, glossy magazine
spreads of call center agents drinking
coffee for the morning shift overseas. There is no war

in my country, I lie to her. (Our war
is simply your country's

success.) Inside me is a city
where the land's springs have long been fitted
into intricate and beautiful fountains. Water endlessly

running back into itself, ornament. The surrounding
fields and orchards parched and fruitless.

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jul 11

Watching The Young Girls of Rochefort for the first time on the big screen >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jul 8

St. Gabriel’s Temporary Morgue by Martha Serpas

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jul 8

Return the slab…or suffer my curse

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jul 1

Time Regained The Manchurian Candidate The Rose King I Love Boosters

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jun 30

First time in The Believer with a poem inspired by my time in Spain three years ago.

Toledo by Derrick Austin

"Viva El Greco, El Rey de los Maricónes."
-Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

Pilgrims, schoolkids
in neon vests. Green
is common: pine, fern,
olive, rosemary. Wind
throws pollen so fine
grains too stay suspended

in the domed station
with delayed trains
and an agent
surveying our happiness
with yes-or-no questions.
Predictably,
mercilessly
hard blades
of local steel
remain popular mementos
among other Americans
and are frequently confiscated

The El Greco apostle
on my postcard—
flesh rendered
flame-like, woozy,
hieratic, other—
embodies ardor
and endurance I lack
as a bachelor
with a weakness
for travel: As
a way to. As almost
a stay against.

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jun 1

The Truth the Dead Know by Anne Sexton

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· Jun 1

Throne of Blood Seven Samurai Female on the Beach The Moment

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 18

Child by Sylvia Plath

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 18

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 9

How I’m feeling now

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 8

To go along with their edition of Wuthering Heights, wouldn’t it be fab to preorder @sandtclassics.bsky.social’s edition of Jane Eyre? Link below!

The book cover for Smith and Taylor Classics’s edition of Jane Eyre

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 6

Dear Nephew by Brian Tierney

Derrick Austin@paradiselaust· May 5

It’s the publication day for my third book of poems, This Elegance. You can order a copy from @boa-editions.bsky.social or your favorite local bookstore (link in bio). ✨💜