There are many threads and styles and moods in Fady Joudah’s Tethered to Stars—the book is a constellation of these things—but at one point a gorge... | Continue reading
We’re a team.We stick together.We root for each other.When life’s tough, we don’t quit until we punch it in the end zone.We call football “foot... | Continue reading
The Clif Bar company’s motto is Make It Good. A past one was Feed Your Adventure. These taglines don’t accord with my lived experience of scarfing ... | Continue reading
I’m just a lowly seventeenth-century British sailor, not some fancy-pants seventeenth-century British sawbones, but there’s one thing I know for su... | Continue reading
Performance review: the final frontier. This is the employee review of Commander William T. Riker of the USS Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to... | Continue reading
PART IShort Answer Questions1. Some who become ill with COVID-19 need to be intubated and placed on ventilators. Intubation is a painful, invasiv... | Continue reading
Under the pressure to meet someone’s definition of the hip or the relevant, much contemporary poetry can seem skittish, ungrounded, neither here no... | Continue reading
Hi team,I hope this email finds you well. By now, you have no doubt read the memo from Corporate announcing that we’re going to return to the offi... | Continue reading
Hi, if you are reading this essay then congratulations, you are still alive. And if you are alive, then you have either gotten the COVID-19 vaccine... | Continue reading
Hi, if you are reading this essay then congratulations, you are still alive. And if you are alive, then you have either gotten the COVID-19 vaccine... | Continue reading
Dear Occupant —We have been trying to reach you regarding your outstanding Armageddon response.We see from your account that you originally recei... | Continue reading
Do not feed the duck.Do not feed the duck bread. Bread offers little nutritional value for ducks, and the empty calories often cause bloat. Worse,... | Continue reading
I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal, unfortunate island, which... | Continue reading
“Legislation banning abortions after about six weeks is now the law of the land in Texas, effectively ending Roe v. Wade protections in the state.”... | Continue reading
The Texas state government passed 666 “newfangled” laws in 2021—some in the dead of night—many of which take effect today. Here’s a guide (written ... | Continue reading
I forgot to have my first-year college students renounce Jesus in their initial essay of the semester. I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention to ... | Continue reading
I got my first real six-stringBought it at the five-and-dimePlayed it till my fingers bledIt was the summer of ’69Summer of 1969: Man has walke... | Continue reading
I see you stopping even though your dog wants to keep walking. I see the way you look inside that little house on a pole in front of our big house ... | Continue reading
I’d like to welcome this year’s new adjunct faculty to our university. You will need to log on to our web portal as soon as possible in order to up... | Continue reading
“Who’s to blame for the Afghanistan chaos? Remember the war’s cheerleaders… Today the media are looking for scapegoats, but 20 years ago they helpe... | Continue reading
“Based on their calculations, researchers Olivier Jolliet and Katerina Stylianou say that a single hot dog can subtract 36 minutes worth of what th... | Continue reading
The Proud PhaseHaving to sell your kidney on the black market to pay for tuition aside, there’s no greater feeling as a parent than when your kid ... | Continue reading
100 Poems to Break Your Heart will be mistaken for an anthology. Edward Hirsch gathers poems by one hundred poets—from Czeslaw Milosz to Alfonsina ... | Continue reading
Tell me about your first job.I had full responsibility for creating the lands and the waters and the heavens. And light. Actually, light came firs... | Continue reading
Thank you for entrusting your puppy to One Dog At A Time. Many people adopted a pandemic puppy to lift their spirits, only to learn a new pup can b... | Continue reading
“Yes, her Doni Tondo painting is nice. We’ll put that one in the ‘Women Artists’ part of the museum, for like a week.”“So many paintings of naked ... | Continue reading
Summer is coming to an end, and you know what that means…It’s your LAST CHANCE to socialize with me, a first-grade teacher, before I start setting... | Continue reading
Douglas Kearney is known for a poetry that aims to refuse rules and assumptions except for those he invents or consents to. An impossible ideal tha... | Continue reading
Timothy is becoming a man on October 18, 2021. He has a sober understanding of what this means. As Timothy’s father, Dr. Nagle, PhD, and I have bee... | Continue reading
August On day one, be seen taking your students out for a walk. Send a message. The message is: Here I am. Also: This is not a big deal. When yo... | Continue reading
This Girl Is on Fire: Tapping the Secret Power of Temperature DysregulationHere Come the Scarves: Flattering Fashions for Your New NeckMood-surfi... | Continue reading
Deep in the woods of Pepin, Wisconsin, a little girl named Laura Ingalls lived with her Ma, Pa, sister Mary, and Baby Carrie. When Uncle Sam said t... | Continue reading
“Mike Richards, the executive producer of ‘Jeopardy!’ who was tapped to succeed Alex Trebek as host of the venerable game show franchise, announced... | Continue reading
Yusef Komunyakaa has a gift for naming unexpected likenesses, and also a gift for endings, and the two things converge in a poem like “Bedazzled”:... | Continue reading
So you’re a writer who’s just been dumped by a writer—the fourth one in three years—and you’ve decided to make a change. No more writers for you! W... | Continue reading
2021 Parenting Back-to-School Bingo | Continue reading
What fresh hell is this under your bed?Brevity is the soul of the conversations you have with me.The cure for boredom is curiosity. So, for the l... | Continue reading
Fried CalamariTendrils crusted in grit assail my palate. Begotten of the sea, yet containing the essence of a carnival. Fried and without end. At... | Continue reading
The Complete CatastropheThere’s no arguing this one. Quite what [artist/band] was thinking when [pronoun] recorded this travesty is a mystery for ... | Continue reading
I have 39 moving boxes that I need gone. Take them all, and they’re FREE. Leave me with 5 or less and they’re $10. Leave me with 6–10 and t... | Continue reading
Q: Do I have to kill the snake? A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots o... | Continue reading
Hello! Welcome to your first and final flight to space.Let me be the first to say that it has been so, so sad that Earth has been ravaged by war, ... | Continue reading
This July, Bumble settled a lawsuit brought by a man that claimed the app’s “ladies swipe first” policy discriminated against male users. In additi... | Continue reading
Dear Architect,Welcome to my home! I hate it.See, I’m no maximalist, but I’m kind of a sucker for walls. They leave a little something to the ima... | Continue reading
Dear Colleagues:I hope that you and everyone you know or have ever known is safe. As you are likely aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended our l... | Continue reading
From: Ty@gmail.comSubject: Your Beanie Babies may be worth millions! Find out how much you could earn TODAY!Does Platti the Platypus still have h... | Continue reading
This piece originally appeared in McSweeney’s 57. To get stories like this at your doorstep four times a year, subscribe to the Quarterly today. -... | Continue reading
“20 Years of Defense, Erased by the Taliban in a Few Months” — Headline from the New York Times, 8/14/21- - -Wow. This is disastrous. After twent... | Continue reading