I love Hooters. Best cheese steak in town in my opinion.

When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

Roanne, just out of jail, went to cop. That is, she went to beg fat little Freddy the dopeman to front her once more. She'd have to fuck Freddy, of course, but, well, maybe he'd wait until after this time. Likely not…

On the coldest day of the year, the weather man walks back from the measurement booth across a snowed-over plain, solid as cement and tinted with the pale yellow glow of the northern lights.

I experience a presence when walking through the forest . . .

Able to search through centuries, I click, scribble, skim,resurrect wet stone walls, the smell of burning peat.Bob's your uncle; Peggy's your aunt.Name your family, child. My brother said helloto Uncle Shirley and Aunt Greg. I was more…

"Possible candidates for reading to a crowd" the subject line of the email to myself read. You see, writing can be hard - or writing can be easy. But writing for a crowd you'll see is something else entirely.

what was she like you ask? smarter than me for instance she could type alot faster. and she didn’t worry constantly about being poor or having a family looking over her shoulder. maybe that’s what she did with boys. 17 years later and she is in my bed

The summer I turned fourteen I had a job babysitting our neighbor, Pam's three year old daughter, Annie, three nights a week while Pam was going to Junior College, but it was hardly work because, after I tucked Annie in to sleep, I just watched TV, sitting in Pam's den…

No one commented on her altered appearance, although Will in Accounts said he quite liked her hair like that, so she assumed that no one could see the snakes. But she still felt self-conscious, exposed. She had to remember not to talk to them when she was…

Not to...Witness such sufferingWatch as a life fades awayReceive the callAttend this funeralBe surrounded by well meaning family and friendsStand by helplessly as my father sobs in his brother's armsNotice the pain settle in my brother's eyesSee my grandparents' tortured,…

At 11 pm, it is 87 degrees and I sit in front of the air conditioner, eating oatmeal. The oats aren't soft enough, but it is sugary and fills me. Outside, the city hovers at the edge of a brown out, people sweating hopelessly inside small boxes. In Utah, it was cold…

I could be dead wrong.

and, under foot,// dark caves waiting/ with their unseen pigments/ adorning forgotten walls.

Grayson Warren is living the American Dream: a 15-year career as a city cop, a great wife and two kids. And then one day his dream turns into a nightmare.