August 26th, in the Uber ride back home

Early morning, The Economist sends me emails.
I read them on the trip home, lipstick-teethed.

In the backseat crumple the spoils of the evening:
the silver purse, the ruined tissue paper, the poem,

stray sequins, snapped hair, cheap perfume. They
all shine noisily like abandoned confetti. And after all,

what was I to expect on such a night, a night of want?
When we all weren’t looking, the harbour swelled

like a breast, like a corpse. I heard it was from the damp
in the air — I heard that there was a storm and that it was

hot and wet and salty and everything a reckoning should be,
I heard that it raged until the dawn came, nails on windowpanes,

begging to be let in. And in the accusing morning, the
concrete was damp and saline-struck, like clean tears.

Cadence Chung

Cadence Chung is a poet, student, composer, and musician from Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, currently studying at the New Zealand School of Music. Her debut poetry book anomalia was published in April 2022 with Tender Press, and her poetry has been published and commissioned widely by Starling, The Spinoff, Landfall, Turbine, Takahē, and others. She put on her original musical In Blind Faith at BATS Theatre in August 2022, performed her Sapphic lyre compositions at Verb Festival 2022, and composed song cycles to NZ poetry for Cud-Chewing Country, an interdisciplinary concert. She takes her inspiration from dead poets and antique stores.