Hint Fiction Submissions

Retirement
Nursing his shattered hand, Johnson struggled to pull in more sail. The growing waves powered over the rail, steadily filling his long dreamed of yacht.

Filial Piety
The soft and jagged moaning from his mother's room would not distract Andrew from preparing her lunchtime tray-orange juice, soft-boiled eggs, and many, many pills.

Twelve Steps
Staring into the tumbler of amber liquid, Thomas came to the realiztion he'd awaited. “There is no higher power,” he told himself as he sipped.



Submit your own hint fiction at http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8. Deadline Aug. 15.

Her Temperature Seemed To Have Frozen At 99.8℉

(perhaps it was the thermometer but, looking back, I don't think so)

and our fevers rolled between us.

Our bones, by themselves, became an aching groan

with spooky dreams all day, every day.

Those marks, then, on the palms of my hands

I began to consider a kind of stigmata

and thrilled at the tracings of blood they left

on this woman's body

the line from breast through waist and hip

that scattered into the smear I had made around her vagina.

"Do that again," I told her.

"Do that a lot."

And panting on elbows and knees

a mask of lipstick and saliva and threads of my own semen

crawled underneath my eyes

I buried my hands inside her bedclothes,

each fist a growing evidence of fear and faith.

Snow at a Bad Time

I am pulled outside, out the door, off the porch and into that patch in front of my house called the "yard";

I am walking in small circles and I'm saying or thinking or thinking I'm saying,

"What is this stuff, what is this stuff, whatisthisstuff, stuff?" even though I know it is snow;

so, I start thinking "why did it have to snow now? Of all times, why did it have to snow now?"

and my footprints are punching holes in the whiteness and I can see the grey and the black

and the dirty brown beneath and I start to feel better right away.

Miraculous

Could it be considered miraculous if a man were to live in bed for almost 35 years eating precious little but chocolate cake and milk and writing ream after ream of nearly insensible pornography?

And the pounding on the floor,
her ceiling,
for more cake and more Big Chief writing tablets and more pencils and
the odor of sour milk creeps down their parents’ stairs while the miracle pounds on the floor for supplies
and the miracle’s sister stands in the kitchen for just a moment, just the barest sliver of her heart’s beat,
and imagines herself just walking out the back door
and down she’d pass the little shed and through the back gate to the alley and from the alley to the street and,
in that heartbeat’s passing she can imagine
a life complete and full but,
then what?

So, which is more miraculous? A man living in a bed for 35 years, the cake, the milk and the porn or that this same man, out of all the people in the entire history of people, would be related to probably the only person on the planet who would put up with that kind of shit?



(loosely inspired by H.P. Lovecraft)

To: Those Who Think That Where They Are Is Why They Are

He walks the streets
night lit down
searching for murders
and often finds them
Standing far back to treasure
the jeweled squealings
the liquid blessings
for asphalt and broken glass

Sucking meats from smallish bones
he grins
to remember spare delight
and shuddered tenderness
Grease wanders from his face
congeals
and melts again

He washes his hands
in the pools of battery acid and antifreeze
that gather behind the ZipLube on 9th Street
and he knows it is a good place to be
Red and black checkered flannel
is a kind of solace
and the sun that rises behind his eyes
is no less dim than that one, there, on that horizon



(Originally published in Blue Mesa Review, 1992)

Stephanie Inside the House, in Chains

The apartment looked deceptively small from the street. It had been a store of some kind and then converted into a "living space" by hippie artists years before we ever moved in. It was narrow but very long. Sometimes, it seemed to stretch forever, back and away.

In the morning, sunshine streamed through the plate glass windows that had once been for display. It could become quite warm then and we often left the door open and fresh air would circulate. On the roof, I had built a platform and we would sunbathe there or, at night, listen to the scattered small arms fire from the Valley. One summer night, we made love there while a thief broke in through the back door and stole our television. Stephanie's thighs, coated with her own secretions and my semen, had glistened in the night sky's frantic light.

I built a partition and a sleeping loft under which I placed my desk. I would work into the early morning while Stephanie slept above me and, when I was finished, I would climb up. Sometimes she would almost awaken and murmur strange things in a kind of half-sleep, and I would stroke her cheek or forearm until she turned back to dreams.

We lived there for five years and Stephanie wore her bruises like secret medals. I would sit outside on a kitchen chair with my shirt unbuttoned in the afternoon sun and I would imagine my envelopment within her, imagine my consumption of her, imagine her trembling with anticipation. She would writhe. She would whisper, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

He Was Sorry.

He was sorry that he had even come over

in the first place.

In the first place, why was he still bothering her?

Next, she had left

her shades up in the window

by the window he had to look through

when he was just ringing her doorbell.

Her breasts were flattened against the table.

Her spine made a convex and then a concave line as it

pushed against the man who pushed inside her.

She didn't even see him at first

and then she did

and then she made a stupid little smile on his face

and waved a little wave with his hand.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see him

and the long muscles in her shoulders stood out

when she arched her back


(Originally published in Tyounyi, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1989)

The Money Shot

The difference between lovebirds and true lovebirds is a swallow.

Anonymous

If that squall of semen

strung across your face

slantwise from eye-line to jaw-line

isn’t the signature of

your true affection,

then it’s close enough.

It’s close enough for me.

July 19 - August 1

I was away for a family health crisis and cut off from my computer and files.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Thank you for your patience and continued patronage.

Robert

They Took It Outside

I mean, these two middle-aged men,
salesmen both or managers maybe,
each bald but each in a different way,
gripping thin glasses of, for god’s sake,
scotch & water, seven & seven, beige drinks,
fumbled their escalation through quilted doors
to mix it up, settle some hash, pound it out
in the parking lot.

It was awful as their disconnected swings
dissolved into panted wrestling,
six inches of pale skin showing as the fat one’s
trousers twisted up his leg,
the slurred curses swallowed,
short breath gargled in the shuffle
as they tired of what had seemed
like the thing to do.

Somehow, I held their coats
and the fabric of each looked
especially weird under the
sodium lights outside.

It was embarrassing.
Locked together half under a Taurus,
wet from parking lot puddles
and the tall one’s shirt had ripped at the shoulder seam,
they half-rolled back and forth,
now silent save for whistled breathing
and the argument was lost
among the gravel and the bottle caps.

I draped their jackets together
across the hood of an Acura
and left them there,
but I kept the wallets.
I wanted to get out of there
before things got hideous,
before they agreed to respect each other,
shake hands, buy each other rounds.
I wanted to remember them
just they way they lay.

Imaginary Syllabus

Eng345 – Writing With Purpose
MWF 11:00 – 11:50 am
The course is designed to build upon previously learned writing skills to provide the student with a renewed sense of intention and an appreciation for the varied communicative values of language.

Spring Semester
Learn to bake bread
Fight, break up, and make up with a romantic partner
Eat something unfamiliar
Take something apart. put it back together, and make it work despite the leftover pieces
Watch the last of the ice in the gutter dissolve under the first warm rain
Explain a feeling to a stranger
Eavesdrop constantly
Read a paperback book at least 25 years old (especially one with a lurid cover)
Remember something forgotten
Drink to excess and experience remorse
Make a mask
Buy used shoes at a thrift store or flea market and wear them

Summer Semester
Wake up late
Try to attract songbirds to your home
Give up an advantage
Wear a t-shirt backwards and/or inside out all day
Assemble a model airplane, boat, or car
Slowly reread a favorite book from childhood
Eat cold food
Experiment with musical instruments
Eavesdrop constantly
Revisit a childhood playground
Wear shoes on the wrong feet
Learn the names of 12 stars

Fall Semester
Destroy a favorite possession
Explain centrifugal force to a child
Pick at a sweater
Go barefoot all afternoon
Smoke a cheap cigar
Call someone unexpectedly
Read outside until darkness makes it impossible to continue
Stare at a half-glass of vodka for at least 20 minutes
Imagine what it would be like to lose a limb
Eavesdrop constantly
Run laps around something
Do something that seems like a good idea at the time

Winter Semester
Wear a friend’s shoes
Learn a new game and play it obsessively
Compose a love letter and burn it
Consider the leafless trees
Eavesdrop constantly
Exacerbate a problem
Nurse a houseplant back to health
Experiment with smoking a pipe
Read someone else’s diary; don’t get caught
Say something awkward in public
In some fashion or another, go fishing
Sit by a window with a cheek pressed to the cold glass

She Would Wake from Her Nightmares and

angry, she would carry her emotion
against him, against whom she had dreamed,
against whom she'd dreamed badly.

Sleep soft palms slapping him,
his shape there next to hers in a black iron bed,
with barely formed
groans of strange words,
words like "blue"
and "steam ship"
and "corridor"
and, until she woke,
their meaning was clear and
when she wakes all that is left her is the sadness of the dream
and there is no comfort in embrace.

The dry sound of them panting confusion
is a metronome for the movement again
and back toward another kind of sleep.

A Bunch of Pictures Back from the Film Lab

The Four Good Ones

1. New Moistness

Bobbi was as surprised as she could be by the shards of glass that appeared in her lap–-so surprised, in fact, that she did not connect the noise of the window's shattering to the wicked looking splinters with which she was covered. She just aimlessly wondered what they were and where they had come from. Bobbi was so surprised, in fact, that she really didn't hear Eddie as he screamed at her from the other side of newly glassless window nor did she really see the blood sliding out of the inside of his arms and onto her flowers. Then she was afraid to stand or to brush herself, afraid she might get cut.

2. Field Work

Little teeny green cubes of auto safety glass
are scattered at this particular spot along the interstate.
There was an accident here once; someone probably died here once.
If he can lay down flat on the shoulder in the pebbles and dirt,
those little squares of windshield
can catch the light
and that light can then catch his eyes
and he can no longer see the cars at all.
He can only see the light sheeting off their windshields.

3. Broadcast TV No Longer Holds My Interest The Way It Used To

I'm making my own shows now:

She is naked and asleep
which is just about as vulnerable as she ever gets.
She is rolling through the bedclothes and
I know she is dreaming about her hair and her teeth,
about losing them.
Her nightmare causes her to grip her pillow very hard, very tightly.
One artificial fingernail falls away
like a kind of shell caught in a powerful tide.

4. A Point of Convergence / A Point of Departure

I watched her limp out of the surf and at first I thought she'd been bitten by something in the water. She was wincing. She sat down in the dry part of the sand and I came over to see what was wrong. What it was was that there was a long splinter of bluegreen glass angled into her instep. A thrilling, painful sympathy shuddered through me when I knelt beside her. We were both terrified that something was so obviously wrong, that she could be so obviously damaged. She drew her breath in sharply, much more sharply than usual. There was no blood on her foot at all until I worked the sliver from beneath her skin.


(Originally published in Carp, Volume One, Issue 3, 1996)

Saying a Name One Thousand Times,

it has become an empty noise.

Right here
she is rolling in bed
sheets tangled in her legs
sweat traces
a line from wristbone to hip
her hands hold the bedpost to whiteness
in her dream it is raining
in her dream they are rained upon

She sees him led to adventure;
he is buying Plum Blossom a drink and he is
wasting that madness to carve her name in the soft tar of a street.

She is suddenly then open
and turned from dreaming rain
her hand slipped down into absence
a knot relaxed and then harder still.

He will bring her
a foreign bloom
for her catalog of flowers
and she will fold it into her album,
the one she keeps under her bed,
the one place he'd never find a greenhouse.

One Quarter of One Hour

The first time when we were on Oprah was physically the hardest. It got easier to talk in front of people the more we did it; I didn't get sick to my stomach or tremble and we all relaxed enough to stop saying the first things that popped into our heads. It got routine--like, here it is Wednesday and I have to talk to my mom (by phone) and Sam and Diane (my foster parents) and The Eggman (that's what I call my mom's lawyer, his real name is Jergenson) and miss school or a couple of days of school and get my homework done on a plane maybe and yap about the legal stuff and the court stuff and our feelings with Phil or Geraldo or Sally Jesse or all the local shows like PM Magazine or Inside Edition-type shows or just even the real news. It was weird to get used to it. I don't think I ever really liked it, but it was a part of my childhood that will always be special and will always be with me. Sometimes, now, at home when I'm watching TV during the day I'll think about the way Phil's studio in Chicago was like, before he moved to New York, and the way all TV studios seem really cheap and shabby in real life. I'll remember being in make-up.

People ask me sometimes if I miss it, if it was strange having those years of my life and the trauma of those years televised. I tell them to ask Lance Loud. I met so many people and lived in hotels and studios and green rooms and airplanes so much that it seemed as if all that had become my life and that it was natural to live the way I had grown up. When I thought about it, it was part of show business was the way I thought about it -- tried being in a band, tried writing, tried "production" work. But it wasn't the same for me and those others like me. We hadn't been actors in commercials or in a series or on Star Search. We didn't have "acts." We were the entertainment; our problems with drugs or incest or satanism or curfews or our parents or gangs or foster-parents or 976-numbers or step-parents or rock lyrics or body piercing or homosexuality or cancer or nightmare proms or pregnancy or sneaker murder or eating disorders or uncontrollable crushes were what made us interesting.

I ended up getting my GED and then learning some word processing (I'm using the computer at work to write this) and started working here. It is only occasionally that someone will look at me as if they remember seeing me before. It's no big deal.

Breath

He remembers
he thinks again
of a night filled with sighs
though not his own
hers

her sighs have filled him
enough to remain filled
though not quite enough
to last until there are sighs again

he has heard
and is hearing a sigh
as it falls through silk toward him

through silk it falls
past silk it is caught
and in the catching is the filling
and in the catching is the remembering
and in the remembering
is the sigh again

stretching into the memory of a sigh remembered
there is silk
and there is the sweet exhalation called a sigh
and that is enough
to make a memory

there is a memory
and there is breath
and there is an empty place
where a sigh would be
and he can catch that empty place
and fill it with his own
his own empty place
his own sigh



(published in El Nopal, University of New Mexico, 1991)

A Kind of Photograph That's Hard to See

this room smells of cancer
and I see loose crazy cells
there in the corners by the window.

thin branches tap the glass here
and I can see the pruning shears
on the workbench in the garage, waiting.

knots of phelgm-soaked tissue
demand the kind of attention that won't come
from me, a guy now wistful.

I miss you already.

Picking Melons by Moonlight

Picking melons by moonlight
It seemed like a good idea at the time
Green fruit glowing in moon-blackened leaves
They call them honeydew

Giving the baby a bath in the sink
The odor of Ivory Soap
Moonbeaming baby in the sink
Water droplets shifting in the air

She opened her mouth and
Let the moon pour down her throat
Until she was full
Until she illuminated herself

Untitled Portrait: revised view

Right-handed right now and right-legged, it shows in the crosses she describes,
a ragged gesture pushed through her close hair, potential knots long fallen away
and the whitened part between thumb's knuckles
against a coiling wire

Lips bitten slow
hollow pressures shaped like pain

Light cracks against this morning's bakery's windows
and there is always yeast,
the delta of condensation rising over the sinks
and the way she passes the back of her arm across the plane of her hairline
This won't last

This is by no means this moment, any moment,
so you hurry up and
turn up the radio and
go home and
quit your job and
get another job
move someplace else
do something different
That's what really happens all the time

Girl At A Window Cleaning Squid

(for amjp)

one hundred, one thousand,
they slip blue grey pearlescent
through her fingers
quick practiced fingers
still baby fat but flying a knife
through squid bodies
endless buckets of dead squid

and the light,
if indeed there were light,
might seem to bend itself toward her hands
and they shine, they glisten
her hands
and the knife
and the bodies of squid