SSF Interrogation

yt sumner of Victoria, Australia

SSF: Okay, so all of your books are going to be lit on fire, and you are allowed to grab ONE. Which do you save?

yt: The Collected Works of Raymond Carver. I would grab that book like it was my only child.

SSF: List everything you have ever been for Halloween:

yt: There are not many I’m afraid, as Australians have never really took to the best holiday on earth. Seriously. Dress ups and Dead People and Sweet, Sweet Candy. What’s not to take to? But I’ve given it a good go a few times…

Queen of Hearts, Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds, Dead Knife Thrower’s Assistant, Zombie Bride, Aristocrat in masquerade suffering from the Red Death, Laura Palmer (wrapped in plastic).

SSF: What are you the most proud of that you have written?

yt: I don’t know if I’m especially proud of any particular piece. I suppose I puff up a bit when one is published. Kind of like, ‘look at my little bird fly’.


SSF: If you could be anyone for his or her looks—who would it be?

yt: Jessica Rabbit.

SSF: At what age did you feel the most sexual?

yt: This age.

SSF: What was the first book you read that you wish you wrote?

yt: Alice in Wonderland. I was a precocious little shit, just like Alice, and I remember thinking ‘I could write a book of nonsense.’

SSF: Describe the process in which you would eat an Oreo:

yt: Break it in half then break the piece again and then eat it in pieces. Although to be fair, I eat most things like this. I use a lot of napkins.

SSF: Do you get better writing done in the morning or at night? Please explain.

yt: Morning for sure. I dream quite vividly and so I usually wake with thoughts and scenes tumbling through my head. I think on my latest piece and if it can be used in some way and it gets the whole ball rolling. I’m also far less likely to be distracted by friends calling for coffee or turning up with wine in the morning.

SSF: What is a day from your life that you would love to re-live?

yt: Arriving in New York for the first time. Meeting friends in Brooklyn. Seeing Les Savy Fav play. Eating giant slices of pizza. Laughing and in love at The Chelsea Hotel.

SSF: What name would you choose for yourself if you were a boy?

yt: Leonardo (after the turtle not the Italian)

SSF: What was the last thing you wrote down on a piece of paper? (Honestly.)

yt: Wm. Farrant’s address on an envelope.

SSF: I wouldn’t be able to write without _____________-

yt: My past.

SSF: What was your favorite toy when you were a kid?

yt: Georgina. A big creepy floppy doll that was nearly as big as me. I dragged her around everywhere and told her stories. I tried to squeeze into her clothes. She had these huge felt, Manga pupils so I cut little holes in the middle so she could see.

SSF: What is your favorite month and why?

yt: January. It’s summer and everyone’s mellow, on holidays, in beer gardens and beaches. And I like that glow of the promise of a new year.

SSF: Thoughts on The Talking Heads:

yt: Wild Wild Life makes me dance like a dork no matter when or where.

SSF: Any last words?

yt: Hopefully not just yet.


Interested in being interrogated? Email me @ sleepsnortmakelove@gmail.com. Please include a picture of yourself or something that you feel represents you. 

Mum And Dad Love Letters

 by yt sumner and Chloe Caldwell


Dear Mum,

Hi how are you? 

I hope your feeling better. I miss you probobly more than the girls and Terry. Its funny though, because sometimes I hate it so much here I feel like jumping out of the window and coming home!

And sometimes its just like being on a holiday…..without you of course. When Terry hurts himself or gets told off he says “Muummy” it sounds so cute.

Gromors coming over tomorrow and Ive got a card for her. 

Don’t worry Ive got a present and a card ready for you when you come.

Im running out of things to say. 

Oh yes I met this really cool girl in my section her name is Michelle Vella. You would really like her. Shes got me to love BROS even more than Naomi  (ha ha)  Oh and someone else whos pretty cool Rosie Harris shes a girl in my grade. Michelle is 15 and rosie is 11. I come into her room nearlly all the time. 

Naomi dosnt really like it here. I hate Angela she is so crabby. 

Ive got nothing else to write except we all Love you.

.p.s. hope you get better soon.

  



yt sumner writes fiction these days - and her spelling has slightly improved. You can spellcheck her at http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/. This week she's proud of not getting drunk at work.  

Chloe Caldwell is proud of yt for not getting drunk at work, but would be prouder if she had gotten just a little buzz.

Every Full Moon

by yt sumner

There’s a beast in the bedroom.

He thinks I’m flattering him when I tell him that. He thinks I’m talking about the way he bites my neck or pulls my hair when we fuck.

He likes it when I say that, he thinks it’s brave to say fuck instead of make love.

But we haven’t done either. I just say it because it makes him bite my neck and pull my hair. What he doesn’t know is that it’s all just been heavy petting. What he doesn’t know is that I want to devour him.

He thinks I’m joking when I say

I’m a hideous thing inside.

He laughs,

At least we’re all oil paintings on the outside.

I decide to tell him when he’s asleep because he’ll think it’s a dream and when he wakes up there won’t be any name-calling or door slamming or blood.

He’ll just wake up and know.

I watch the way he breathes for a long time. His chest heaves like earth being overturned by machinery and I lick the sweat that starts from his collarbone, following the scent up his throat. I have to stop half way. I open my mouth wider, my tongue already thick.

There’s nothing more maddening than a man’s scent. I have no interest in the ones that mask it with deodorants. He smokes and drinks and it laces his musk like wormwood. The bitter drug is so good that by the time I get to his ear, I forget why I’m here. But he groans, still asleep, and his hand reaches between my legs.

This makes it harder but I remember and run my tongue across my teeth for luck then tell him.

His hand moves while my lips press against his ear and when I finish, his hand stills and his eyes open.

He tells me about his dream and his hand starts moving again, his voice rough, and as his other hand reaches into my hair, a tremor begins deep in my throat. I move against him and he tells me about this beast and how it promised to show him all about love. How it would try not to show him unless he asked.

I stretch. Everything stretches and he feels it, and instead of cringing he buries his hands in my hair and pulls hard. He nestles his face into the tremor, now a throbbing growl, where my throat is still stretching, and just before he bites he whispers,

Show me.

Instead of the usual door slamming or name-calling or messy blood mopping, I wake up and he’s still beside me. I trace the raw lacerations streaking his body and he wakes up and smiles at me though one black eye. Before I say anything he asks if it’s still technically a full moon and I growl and he laughs and slides his bruised body, still reeking of man, between my legs and we make love. We fuck. We devour.

Every full moon.

yt sumner writes some, sleeps some, snorts some and fucks some. She’s proud of all of the above. She blogs at http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/

yo-yo girl

by yt sumner

No more make-up sex,
I say.
Looking in the mirror, wondering how it got this way.
With my mascara bloody, with my lips running black. No more. Fucking. Sweating. His pain into my ear. No more crying into the pillow.
In the shower. In the dark.
Or how about no more laughing with my friends,
I can handle it.
It’s just his way.
I’m sure he means it.
I’m sure you can’t fake that.
The way everything disappears when he slides inside, when he takes me hard with enough of the rough to make me feel just enough pain to forget all the things that made me this way. Made me take him. Again and again.
As if I didn’t understand.
What made it worse was that I did.
Of course I did.
All along.
I sang his song. Even though the words got caught in my throat, they made me choke on his disease, the one that made him wheeze,
Please.
Sorry.
Baby, I’m so sorry.
And I took it, let him beat me down, drag me back up. Flip up on his string. With a jerk, with a flick of his wrist, the ones I licked as I pretended my heart was full instead of swollen with disease, infected with him.
Never again,
I say to this teary mess. I beg her not to go back.
You wanted it like this, remember?
The smudged reflection says,
Rough and hard.
From behind.
His hands on your waist.
Steadying you the only way he knew how.
Up and down, like a good girl.
You think I’d be around the world by now.

yt sumner lives in Melbourne, Australia. She writes some – have a snoop at her blog and check out her latest postcard project ‘you and me’ http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com.
SSFuck: What is one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
yt sumner: I'm pretty proud of learning my first stoner rock bass line on the guitar. Fuzz pedals are hot.

He'd Be Nine Now

by yt sumner

I’m the eldest of five.

We all have different fathers, and none of them stuck around past any of our first birthdays, which made me quite good at balancing siblings on my hips. There’s an art to it you know, making sure their little coccyx isn’t rammed into your hipbone but resting on the natural ledge just above it.

That’s what adults said when they saw me out getting groceries pushing a pram with a sister on my hip.

She’s a natural.

You get so natural you can even balance two at a time.

It made adults laugh when I tossed my head and announced

I’m never having kids.

They said

You’ll change your mind when you grow up.

I changed another nappy and muttered

Not bloody likely.

I was precocious.

I was at that age where I’d just learned to sway my hips in that subtle way and not teeter but stride in heels. He looked ten years younger than he was. He told me about his fiance a week before I told him I was pregnant.

That’s when I changed my mind.

The counselor at the hospital said

You’re mature beyond your years and have a very realistic view of single parenting.

That’s when I changed my mind back.

My mother said.

It’s not fucking cancer, just make up your mind.

When I woke up from the anesthetic a woman was sitting beside my bed holding my hand. She said

You’re a good person.

I didn’t know I was crying until she wiped the tears away and I don’t know if I imagined her.

For a year he haunted me. I didn’t believe in ghosts but there he was, everywhere. A woman came into my work one day and looked at me.

It’s time to let him go. He won’t leave you until you do.

I laughed like I had no idea what she was talking about, like we didn’t cry each other to sleep every night. But still I went home, and that night, just like she said to, I lit a candle and said

how sorry I was

I said

goodbye

and he left.


yt sumner lives in Melbourne, Australia and can’t let go of the fantasy that one day she’ll be chosen from the crowd ‘Dancing in the Dark’ style and be whisked off to some rock god’s love den. Yes, a den. She writes some – have a snoop at her blog and check out her latest postcard project ‘you and me’ http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/.