HELENA COLBORN

weekday morning, 2021

This cinquain summarizes what it feels like to start my day during the week. There’s two steps of “getting up” in the morning: waking up and actually planting your feet on the ground to do something. Oftentimes, we don’t acknowledge this process as the first domino to fall within the series of actions we complete today, and without processing the motions of the body in the morning, nothing else can be done. I chose to write this poem in this style because within five lines, I could express something that feels bleak for us students.

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Name Haiku, 2021

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Recently I’ve had a new appreciation for my name and how it perfectly embodies my personality. I also always hoped to write a haiku and actually be pleased with it, so I figured I should write one about myself. If you look my name up, it is Greek for “shining light,” and throughout the haiku I basically reiterate this meaning. Another reason I wrote the poem as a haiku is because many haikus portray natural elements and I believe that the description of light falls under this style perfectly.

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Nineteen, 2021

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I wrote this American cinquain about my age as a nineteen-year-old. After the United States approached it’s one-year mark of the pandemic, I reflected on this experience and eventually my whole life; I had turned 19 during the pandemic and it didn’t feel special at all, but my reflections led me to realize that I accomplished a lot at my age. This poem was an opportunity to acknowledge that my past had curated a present that I can be proud of.

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The Quarantine Free-Write, 2021

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As another reflection of my pandemic experience, I wanted to share what happened in my life, but as a free-write. I also chose to include a theme of a phone, as if my life revolved around my cell phone. I don’t think I’ve spent so much time on my phone in my life compared to this past year, so I wanted to give a sense of how that influenced my life. I also questioned life in the free-write, just as everyone else did with the current events occurring.