
International Lesbian Day is a day that originated in Aotearoa, around 1980. Queer historians say that it was celebrated in May originally, but was moved to 08 October, six months after International Women's Day. International Lesbian Day is one of two annual celebrations of lesbians; the other is Lesbian Visibility Day on 26 April.
Cadence Chung
hey girls
Hey girls could we dance
in the glister of a winter night could we hum
along to the hazy beat of jazz? We could be neon
we could be starlets eyeliner like slits in our skin
holding that little 20s powder compact in the shape of
a gun (with a matching bullet-shaped lipstick).
God, girls I’d love to glow as green as
radium glassware, discarded in the night
like a ghost’s banquet, all the dead dames and dandies
sipping toxic wine, listening to the click of the
Geiger counter getting louder louder louder, girls,
there are graves that still hum with radiation, that you
can’t stand too close to or your cells will go haywire
split, swirl, divide oh girls I’d paint my lips
fluorescent green just to poison for 24,000 years longer.
Hey ladies if the jazz gets too much then how about
we listen to the slow descent into tragedy
that Chopin always reminds me of like the blood
crusted onto a stale knife with lapis, emerald, ruby
on the hilt. We could waltz far too close
at the ball cause a scandal come home with
our petticoats swapped around and smelling like
each other, so much so that the swallows would
change their paths, mix up their routes confused
with the exchange of souls and lace, and love. My girls,
I could be the humble gardener with crooked teeth
and dirt down my nails you could be the fair dame
who never accepts marriage proposals and spends
all her time planting violets to coat in coarse sugar
make the bitter petals sweet. Girls, we could dance
in the dry-throated-heart-thumping mess of waiting
backstage before a show, listen to the crowd shout
louder than the glaring stars. We could wear huge
plastic earrings, so heavy they can only be worn
once a year. Girls, let’s tie the ends of our button-down blouses
and make them into crop-tops wear sunglasses on
our heads, but never let them blind us to our brightness. Hey
hey hey girls if flowers bloom on my grave
then I hope they have disco lights on their stamens
so people never forget the sweat-slicked thumpthumpthump
of my past; the statues of the Greeks were once painted
and were hideously gaudy, but we forget that things were not
always just bronze, marble, and plaster. We forget the click
from the gravestones, growing louder every day. Ticktickticktick
tick, the ground is growing heavy from the weight of such
blistering souls it carries. Tickticktickticktick, girls, before
it’s too late let us paint ourselves with the brightest pigment
and burn our kisses into history books ‒ xoxoxo.
Cadence Chung is a poet, student, musician, and composer from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, currently studying at the New Zealand School of Music. Her debut poetry chapbook anomalia was written in her last year of high school and published in April 2022 by We Are Babies Press. Her writing takes inspiration from Tumblr posts, antique stores, and dead poets. She identifies as Asian, queer, and autistic.
'hey girls' was originally published in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021