The Storm

Wolfgang Petersen, dir. The Perfect Storm (2000)

Monday, July 3rd: Rain and flooding in Auckland – an anticyclone over the South Island keeps the weather stalled in the North. Coromandel takes the brunt. The creek’s up. Your shoes are sodden, socks soaked through, raincoat ineffective. But you’ve done your walk.

The Perfect Storm “hits” today – so do school holidays: the gang’s all here, clustered round the cardboard display for The Road to El Dorado – “It’s really funny when these three guys call those two gods,” explains a small(ish) boy.

Girl with steel comb
like fangs
adjusts her hair

Cheekfuls of popcorn
keep the boys’ mouths shut

Everybody’s got a radio, everybody’s mouth is open, screaming out instructions, commentary … It’s quite a storm.

Dem waves iz beeg
I hope we don’t git sunk
Git outta dere!

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Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (2018)

[3/7-5/8/2000]

[Published in Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand. Ed. Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan & James Norcliffe (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2018): 188;
The Perfect Storm. Video by Gabriel White, Text by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-07350-1. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000)].

[130 wds]

Jack Ross & Gabriel White: The Perfect Storm (2000)

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