The Adroit Journal

Another throwback in anticipation of Issue Fifty-Six coming at the end of the month✨ “Meredith’s world mercifully shrinks… all that exists now are her two pillaging hands and her insatiable mouth.” Read the rest of Bone Meal in Issue Fourteen through the link in our bio.

Fancy a sneak peek into Issue Fifty-Six? Join us on Tuesday night to hear from a handful of our talented poetry and prose contributors! Reserve your free spot at the link in our bio.

Here’s another throwback in anticipation of Issue Fifty-Six releasing at the end of the month. From Issue Fourteen: Ada Limón on navigating loss—grief, rage, and the way poetry comes after, helping make sense of the unimaginable.

Is 2026 the new 2016? We can’t be sure, but we do know we published some incredible writing that year. Here’s an excerpt from Will Brewer’s “Resolution,” featured in Issue Fourteen. Stay tuned for more!

Jesse Nathan’s November 20 captures a cityscape and the fleeting intimacy of connection. Read the rest of Issue Fifty-Five through the link in our bio.

Ali Choudhary’s “The Orgasm Is a Fugitive Event” maps desire and surveillance, tracing moments that slip beneath the grid. Read the rest of Issue Fifty-Five through the link in our bio.

Sarah Lao’s poems drift between memory and the meticulous weight of thought. Read the rest of Issue Fifty-Five through the link in our bio. ✨

Mickie Kennedy’s “The Pecan Tree Leaning Away from My Childhood Home” drips with memory, desire, and the vivid textures of childhood. Read the rest of Issue Fifty-Five through the link in our bio. 🌳

There’s ONE WEEK LEFT to apply for a Djanikian or Veasna So Scholarship! Throw your hat in the ring to join the likes of K-Ming Chang, Paige Lewis, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Gabrielle Bates, Keith S. Wilson, Donte Collins, Leslie Sainz, and many others. theadroitjournal.org/scholars

Maggie Dietz’s “Embrace” moves through years of care, labor, and love—time measured in kitchens, calendars, and the quiet weight of touch. Read through the link in our bio. 🍽️

Sarah Voss’s “Bones” traces hunger, care, and refusal—where bodies mirror each other and survival thins to taste alone. Link in bio. 🦴

Adroit’s 2026 Summer Mentorship Program opens for submissions in February! Sign up for updates at the link in our bio. ✏️

We’ve extended the deadline for our 2026 Djanikian and Veasna So Scholarships to Thursday, January 15th, giving you two extra weeks to apply. Happy New Year, and happy submitting! ✨ theadroitjournal.org/scholars

An excerpt from Second Acts: A Second Look at Two Second Books in Poetry by Lisa Russ Spaar considers how visual art practices—collage, abstraction, assemblage—shape and expand the possibilities of contemporary poetry. Read through the link in our bio. 🖼️

Suitemates by Hannah Hanction captures dorm life, snowmelt, and the strange turns friendship takes when the world around you suddenly feels unfamiliar. Read the full story through the link in our bio. ❄️

Flávio de Araújo’s “Courtship,” translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren, unfolds desire through saltwater, offering, and the charged lyric of the coast—where love blooms sharp and alive. Link in our bio. 🌊

Bruce Snider’s “Overture” opens with song, faith, and inheritance—grass as music, labor, memory, and loss—braiding family, belief, and the body into a chorus that keeps repeating. An excerpt from Issue Fifty-Five. Link in our bio. 🌱

In The Forum for Issue Fifty-Five, Teresa Dzieglewicz speaks with Leonora Simonovis about how time on the land reshaped her relationship to water, community, and self—recovering a way of noticing our ancestors once knew. Read the full conversation through the link in our bio. 🌊

Adroit has merch! Shop tote bags, posters, hats, and other new additions at the link in our bio.

Lo Naylor’s “Amends,” a reckoning spoken through absence, memory, and the unbearable weight of what was and wasn’t done. The poem moves room by room, door by door, holding grief where language strains to keep up. Read through the link in our bio. 🕯️

An excerpt from Du Fu’s “Facing Snow,” translated by Scott Dalgarno—where exile, age, and grief move through snowfall and dusk, and the unanswered question of how to live inside a broken time remains. Read the full poem through the link in our bio. ❄️

An excerpt from Asyl Ospan’s “Girl Name That Starts With B,” a story that opens on arrival—heat, dislocation, and the slow work of letting a world form before it’s written.

An excerpt from Brian Teare’s “A Stranger Is an Animal Who Doesn’t Sing,” a lyric that navigates hatred, history, and the inheritances we carry. Read the full piece through the link in our bio. 🕊️

Munira Tabassum Ahmed traces the faultline between language, memory, and the intimate silences that accompany loss in “The Fog Clears Like an Afterlife.” Read the full piece through the link in our bio. 🌫️

Bobby Elliott reflects on the distilled power of language in his debut collection The Same Man, a meditation on quiet ambition and poetry that reaches exactly who it needs to. Read the full interview through the link in our bio. ✍️

Weijia Pan’s “Quadriptych of Terrible Situations” threads history, inheritance, and the stories we tell to survive them. Pan—a finalist for the Editor’s Prize in Fiction—melds genre and memory with uncommon force. Read the full poem through the link in our bio. 📜

Sung Haena’s Honmono (The Real Thing) pulses with ecstatic devotion—a mudang spinning beyond youth, fame, and fear, chasing a moment of pure contact with the spirits. Read the full translation by Lee Kyung Min through the link in our bio. 🥁

Corey Van Landingham’s “Perspective, Coyoacán” enters the canvas with Frida—stepping out of history and into her own frame, a body learning to foreground itself against a world of borders, railways, and mirrors. Read the full poem through the link in our bio. 🎨

Patrick J. Zhou’s “A Fishhead Summer” was a finalist for the Editor’s Prize in Fiction. It moves through the rites of becoming—what it means to arrive somewhere new, unprepared, and convinced that closeness is something you can simply will into being. Link in bio. 🌊

Eliza Gilbert’s “Plotnick,” runner-up for the Adroit Prize in Prose, tracks the electric charge of recognition—the moment you turn around, already knowing who will be waiting there, and the ache that follows. Read the full story through the link in our bio. 🎸