Claudia Ann Seaman Award
In The Praise of Television
Angela Wei
Palo Alto, California
Groton School
Poetry
Somebody has left
on the news, headlines
passing through
like lawnmowers.
Sunday. Clotheslines
pass through lawns.
Their shadows
bow to the grass—
the soil, the breath,
the scandal
of the watering can.
Before that,
the fork impaling
the pancake. Before that,
butter, thawing
on the tongue.
Maple syrup,
in garish silence.
Sit. Because the phone
will not ring.
Because the unwashed
plates are Caravaggio’s
soiled feet. Because
the faucet drips
to remember. How feet
curve through the lawns.
How, without hands,
some bodies watch
and watch. The vacuum
hums. The dust
settles down like flour
on the roof
of countertops.
Sunday passes
through the hose.
Fade out.
The ads play.
EDITORIAL PRAISE
An unsettling blend of the mundane and the eerie, “In The Praise of Television” leaves you with a sense of static inside. The author carefully slips “shadows” and “garish” between seemingly innocuous details and the slow passage of time, forcing readers to lean closer and unbalancing them in the process. This piece perfectly captures the stillness and dread of a Sunday afternoon.
Angela Wei is a senior editor for The Grotonian, a literature and art magazine, and the creative director of Circle Voice, a student newspaper. An alumna of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Angela is a student writer at Groton School in Massachusetts. She has won various regional awards for her visual art, and her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Typishly, The Nasiona, Five South, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Angela enjoys baking, reading, and playing bass and piano. She lives in California.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR