DERRICK AUSTIN on

James Merrill
The Mad Scene

Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry.
In it, the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share,
The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever
Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly,
Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper
Onto moon-marbly boards. We had just met. I watched
From outer darkness. I had dressed myself in clothes
Of a new fiber that never stains or wrinkles, never
Wears thin. The opera house sparkled with tiers
And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,
Trained inward. There I saw the cloud-clot, gust by gust,
Form, and the lightning bite, and the roan mane unloosen.
Fingers were running in panic over the flute’s nine gates.
Why did I flinch? I loved you. And in the downpour laughed
To have us wrung white, gnarled together, one
Topmost mordent of wisteria,
As the lean tree burst into grief.

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Black Sand, is recently out from Foundlings Press. His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and the Norma Faber First Book Award. Tenderness was a finalist for a Golden Poppy Award, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and a Northern California Book Award.

Austin earned his bachelors in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tampa and an MFA in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writer's Program at the University of Michigan where he was awarded a Hopwood Award in Graduate Poetry and the Helen S. and John Wagner Prize rewarding distinction in the writing of poetry at the graduate level. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry 2015, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The Nation, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry London, Australian Book Review, Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, The Nervous Breakdown, Tupelo Quarterly, and Black Nerd Problems. He has had poems and essays commissioned by The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Museum, Craft Contemporary, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, LAXART, and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.