Issue #28.5 A Triple Issue: Nicholas Alti, Sophia Carroll, and

Richard LeDue

A Poem by Nicholas Alti

If in Language is Lightness and in Lightness Transformation


Lucretius set out to write the poem of physical matter, but he warns us at the outset that this matter is made up of invisible particles. – Italo Calvino


Those who say less is more often have quite a good deal,

preach Flesh is Curse and  boast a swell bill of health;

these events always expose some victim in the park,

a single convenient witness inconveniently impaired. 

Space and time collapse inside ten thousand teeth

or rather such occasions render brothers asunder:

yes, the sister was  so much stronger. 

Listen! I have a cult swarming with kin,

not an itch of hurt annoys or boils me. 

I have the healthy body problem—

a happy alive family

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From rural Michigan, Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta who holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. He is interested in horror, arcana, silliness, and surrealism. His poetry is in The Horror Zine, DIAGRAM, Star*Line, The Midwest Quarterly, and elsewhere. Find all his published work at 3bluntzatonce.com.

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A Poem by Sophia Carroll

Venus on Ozempic 

My therapist instructs me  to write a letter from my belly 

to myself. “Why do you hate me? I’m just doing my best,” 

it begins. The white pills I press to my tongue like Communion 

wafers are making me fat.  I need them so I don’t kill myself. 

I’m more goblin than goddess. My hair isn’t long enough

to reach my cunt like in the Botticelli 

and I was supposed  to be skinny, growing up 

in the heroin chic age— like Kate Moss. I saw a sculpture

of her once, contorted, cast in gold, life-size and her actual weight,

hollow. It’s about control— they want us empty, twisted 

and scrunched. I was six  the first time I threw out my lunch.

Thought being underweight  was kind of like getting an A-plus.

Now there’s ‘slim thicc’— women can have big hips if

they also have small waists.  My waist was wasted on me

when I was crazy. Now  I’m fat and stable, no one

wants to date me. I rot all night long on the couch,

and my belly folds over itself into a pouch where I could hide

more pills—the fun kind— or drink tickets, or coins,

pressed flowers, Polaroids of myself when I was thin—

“This was me—can you believe I didn’t even love myself then?” 

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Sophia Carroll (she/they) is an analytical chemist and writer. Her work appears in wildnessSmokeLong QuarterlyRust & Moth, and elsewhere. She is also the co-founder of M E N A C E, a magazine for the literary weird. Find her on Substack at Torpor Chamber and on Bluesky @torpor-chamber.bsky.social.

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A Poem by Richard LeDue

“The Most Metaphorical Mountain”

The trees this spring still have no leaves, quiet as another love poem written for someone who hates poetry, but the poet is at least relieved to have feelings fit between the lines, even if written in crooked cursive, and the more it goes unread, the more self-professed genius screams  from the most metaphorical mountain, causing neighbours to complain about the noise disguised as an unsaid hello or thriving crab grass.

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Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He has been published both online and in print and is the author of numerous books of poetry. His latest full length book, “Another Another,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2025.

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