read my lips

bright green papayas in
a petrol barren

this body doesn’t end
passing the narrow

threshold to the netherworld
thumb in your navel

it happens      like this

our sadnesses
pass between us

without our
permission

Graduating from Beloit College, Madison McCartha has had flash-fiction published in Burrow Press, and poetry in Nightjar Review [link: https://nightjarreview.com/madison-mccartha.html ], Verse Press [link: https://verse.press/madison-mccartha/7238982203553903822 ], and The Pinch. Raised in San Diego, Madison recently spent his time freezing to death in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he served both as Asst. Editor and Design Editor for Cream City Review, and became the Poetry Editor for Storm Cellar Quarterly. At Notre Dame, he reads for the Notre Dame Review, and has served as the Managing Editor for Yield Magazine. Artists who have influenced him include Antonin Artaud, Aimé Césaire, Peter Gizzi, Kim Hyesoon, Dorothea Lasky, Larry Levis, Anne Waldman, Kara Walker, and Yoko Tawada. Madison’s interests include horror flicks, affect theory, shamanism, Björk, and a capacious poetry capable of housing a multiplicitous self.