Note: this poem has no single reading order. It consists of ten lines arranged in a square which can be combined in different ways to form various readings. The reading order below is what one would read if one started at the top center and read clockwise, spiraling inward.
Mackenzie Polonyi is a Pushcart-Prize-nominated paprika poet, storyteller, educator, and children’s section specialist bookseller based in New Jersey and New York. Her debut poetry collection, Post-Volcanic Folk Tales, was a winner of The National Poetry Series. Her work may be found or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Palette Poetry, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Tupelo Press, Diode Poetry Journal, Driftwood Press, Bennington Review, A Velvet Giant, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. Mackenzie earned her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University, where she was a lecturer.