“In Plato’s Cave No. 1” by Rebecca Bernard appears in Issue Fifty-Five. A darkly vivid meditation on routine, intimacy, and the surreal edges of human work—where love and horror share the same dinner table. 🍝🖤 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Still Life with Roses, Wyeth’s Christina’s World, and a Poem by Larry Levis in My Lap” by Nikhe Braimah appears in Issue Fifty-Five. A haunting meditation on love, art, and the quiet violence of being witnessed.🌹✨ Read the poem via the link in our bio.

Issue Fifty-Five is here! Featuring our 2025 Adroit Prizes & Editor’s Prizes recipients alongside other luminous writers & artists. 🍂 Read the full issue at the 🔗 in our bio!

“Squeezing the Sad Bladder” by Nicole Callihan appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A raw, luminous reflection on the body, illness, and the intimate landscapes of memory—where grief, humor, and presence collide. 💔✨ Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Red Hill” by Andrew Chi Keong Yim appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A haunting meditation on birth, displacement, and environmental grief—where memory, water, and return intertwine. 🌊🏮 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

Join us next Tuesday (10/28) & Wednesday (10/29) for back-to-back virtual readings celebrating Issue Fifty-Five and our Fall prize recipients! RSVP for one or both events at the link in our bio. ✨

“To the Girl Dancing on the Corner Waiting for the Bus” by Ruth Williams appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A tender elegy that begins with a child’s quiet joy and unfolds into grief, resilience, and the ache of continuing. 💔🩰 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Legless” by Leath Tonino appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A darkly tender meditation on loss, body, and perspective—where even severed limbs seem to speak. 🦵📖 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Karatina Market” by Migwi Mwangi appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A sensory stroll through memory, market life, and ancestral presence—where the mundane ripens into the miraculous. 🥭🌾 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Karatina Market” by Migwi Mwangi appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A sensory stroll through memory, market life, and ancestral presence—where the mundane ripens into the miraculous. 🥭🌾 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Ribs” by Livvy Jean appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A visceral reimagining of creation and womanhood—where myth meets the modern body beneath museum lights. 🩸🕯️ Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Tongue Surgery” by Elizabeth Kim appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A sharp, meditative inquiry into language, anatomy, and assimilation—where the body becomes both subject and sentence. 🔪💬 Read the full poem via the link in our bio.

Adroit is growing! 🌱 Learn more & apply at the link in our bio.

“Koan: What Was Your Face Before You Were Born?” by Ye Chun appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A haunting meditation on lineage, shame, and the faces we inherit—where memory blurs into mirror and love becomes an act of recognition. 🌙🪞 Read the full poem via the link in our bio.

“Contributor Forum: Lena Moses-Schmitt & Sarah Lyn Rogers” appears in Issue Fifty-Four. An illuminating dialogue between two artists exploring the intersections of anger, image, and perception—where poetry meets the act of looking. 🎨📝 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“Art Therapy: Kingdom Animalia” by Misha Tentser appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A playful, tender dive into childhood memory, imagination, and the messy, beautiful intersections of life and art. 🐇🎨 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

Announcing the recipients of the 2025 Adroit Prizes for Poetry & Prose, selected by Aria Aber & Danez Smith!

“Lucky” by Douglas W. Milliken appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A sharp, unflinching glimpse into the ritual of parties, human folly, and the dizzying symmetry of chaos and desire. 🍸🎨 Read the excerpt via the link in our bio.

“When My Dad Says My Poetry Is Pornographic” by Dorsey Craft appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A poem of inheritance, faith, and the fraught intimacy of being seen—where language itself becomes both wound and witness. 🔥📖 Read the full piece through the link in our bio.

Last but not least, here are our editors’ art nominees for Best of the Net 2025! 🖼️

Here are our editors’ fiction & creative nonfiction nominees for Best of the Net 2025!

Poems by Shizuka Omori, translated by Yuki Tanaka, appear in Issue Fifty-Four. These tanka shimmer with intimacy—small moments of contact, perception, and stillness that hold entire worlds. 🌸✨ Read the full selection via the link in our bio.

“Breaching” by Athena Nassar appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A poem that swells with the wonder of teaching—where meter, image, and courage break the surface like a whale coming up for air. 🌊📖 Read the full piece via the link in our bio.

We’re pleased to present our poetry nominations for Best of the Net 2025. Keep an eye out for our nominations in fiction, creative nonfiction, and art as the week goes on!

“Archive of Absence” by Jo Bear appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Tracing desire, inheritance, and the untold histories of women in motion, Bear’s poem reimagines a lineage of strength and longing. ⚾🌙 Read the full piece via the link in our bio.

“Confessions” by Valencia Robin appears in Issue Fifty-Four. In this candid and restless piece, Robin blends humor, longing, and raw honesty. Read the full work via the link in our bio. 📝✨

“Aura Points” by Margo Steines appears in Issue Fifty-Four. In this searing work of creative nonfiction, Steines confronts beauty, motherhood, and the uneasy contradictions of raising a child in a world that commodifies appearance. Read the excerpt via the link in our bio. 💡📖

Jeannie Vanasco, interviewed by Marisa Siegel, appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Discussing her new memoir A Silent Treatment, Vanasco considers the ethics of writing about real people. Read the full interview via the link in our bio. 📚✨

“If You Weren’t Such a Good Boy, You’d Remember” by Sudha Balagopal appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A story of youth, silence, and first love, set against the rhythm of a train bound for the future. Read the excerpt via the link in our bio. 🚉💫

“Observer Effect” by Jacques J. Rancourt appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Love, loss, and the strange ways light refracts our lives. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 🌅🐾

“Second Acts: A Second Look at Two Second Books in Poetry” by Lisa Russ Spaar appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Read via the link in our bio. ✨📖

“Future Fig” by Emily Skaja appears in Issue Fifty-Four. This tender poem traces love, loss, and the small, miraculous gestures that endure when life changes everything. Read the excerpt via the link in our bio. 🌱💔

We are thrilled to announce the winners and finalists of the 2025 Adroit Journal Editor’s Prizes in Poetry & Fiction! Learn more at the link in our bio.

“Some Pieces Are Missing” by Trisha Kostis appears in Issue Fifty-Four. This moving essay traces the fractures of memory and family as a father’s sense of self collides with the present moment. Read the excerpt via the link in our bio. 🧩🕰️

Katherine Larson, interviewed by Celeste Lipkes in Issue Fifty-Four, reflects on silence and disappearance in her latest book Wedding of the Foxes (Milkweed Editions, 2025). Read the full conversation via the link in our bio. 🌿🦊

We’re open! Send us your best poetry, prose, and art by November 1st. For submission guidelines, visit the link in our bio. 🌀

“Chimera” by Rob Arnold appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A stark and unflinching poem, it confronts grief, despair, and memory with searing imagery and luminous intensity. Read it now via the link in our bio. 🩸🌌

“Roof and Sky” by Valeria Parrella, translated by Sonya Gray Redi, appears in Issue Fifty-Four. This vivid, unsettling story explores pressure, absurdity, and survival. Read the excerpt via the link in our bio. 🎯📄

“Bird Burning” by Spencer Nitkey appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 🕊️🔥

“Interim” by Carolina Hotchandani appears in Issue Fifty-Four. From downed power lines to the fragile return of light, Hotchandani’s poem hums with tension, survival, and startling clarity. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 🕯️

“We Still Don’t Kiss” by Paul Rousseau appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A story buzzing with first-love anxiety, awkwardness, and the weight of being unsure—Rousseau captures every cringe and heartbeat in vivid, electric detail. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 🎸

Rosalie Moffett appears in Issue Fifty-Four, interviewed by Jim Whiteside. Making a Living reflects on capitalism’s grip, motherhood, and the small and large distractions of American life—both seductive and threatening. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 💼

“Sunday in East London” by Nathalie Schmid, translated by Ellene Glenn Moore, appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Peonies, pigeons, and quiet streets—Schmid’s poem captures moments both ordinary and luminous. Read the full translation via the link in our bio. 🌸

Gabrielle Calvocoressi appears in Issue Fifty-Four. One of the most daring, tender voices in American poetry, they share a new poem ahead of their forthcoming book The New Economy (Copper Canyon, Oct 2025). 🚪

“Ismael Cortinas” by Mercedes Estramil, translated by Travis Price, appears in Issue Fifty-Four. A bodega robbery unfolds less like a crime than a performance, with language as sharp and startling as the act itself. Read the full translation via the link in our bio. 🔥

“Matrescence” by Natalie Scenters-Zapico appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Between Muscovy ducks and the pressures of motherhood, the poem plumbs loneliness, survival, and the raw edges of living. Read the full poem via the link in our bio. 🪷

“The Firmament” by Miklos Mattyasovszky appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Lovers, awe, and the traces of humanity unfold across firelit nights as the story bends around love, fear, and perception. Read the full piece via the link in our bio. 🌙

“Cardinals” by Kevin Young appears in Issue Fifty-Four. Moving between barrenness and bloom, the poem bends into winter’s buffeting winds and the promise of spring. Read the full poem via the link in our bio. 🌿

In a conversation with Swati Sudarsan, Patrycja Humienik reflects on the origins of her debut poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes: a longing that stretches “way back, to before I was born,” shaped by migration, risk, and loss.

Introducing the Forum, Adroit’s home for critical essays, interviews, and reviews! Consider it the new & improved version of the Adroit blog you know and love. Visit the link in our bio to read these recent additions in full—or bookmark them for the weekend ahead. 💭