Issue #29.8 A Triple Issue Simon Ravenscroft, John Wojtowicz, Andrew Ray Williams
A Poem by Simon Ravenscroft
To want nothing more than absolute clarity
Adamantine mists blur the line of earth & sky / the horizon is all softness, a foam of light, precision gone.
No here nor there, no reference point.
Where are the seraphim to guide me?
In my headphones choirs of seeming angels sing Os justi / I breathe & stretch out in familiar fields of warm inertia, wormwood tickling at my feet.
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Simon Ravenscroft is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge in England. He has published poems recently in Osmosis Press, The Penn Review, Apocalypse Confidential, Full House Literary, ē·rā/tiō, RIC Journal, High Horse, Red Ogre Review, La Piccioletta Barca, and other places.
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A Poem by John Wojtowicz
Toast Ghost
My mind often (and quite suddenly) takes the stairs two at a time to a study tucked somewhere in the executive suite of my prefrontal cortex.
I like to imagine there’s a Persian rug, a rack of billiard pipes; walnut bookshelves and a turquoise wingback with brass studs. Here I’ll recall
two bats I saw the other night
which will send me spiraling into the varieties of mammals. And soon I’ll be pondering platypuses while muscle memory continues with the mundane task at hand.
When I snap back to my programming, I try putting two slices of bread in the toaster but find two cold pieces of toast. I alert my family. No one claims them:
Toast Ghost.
This is not the first visit we’ve had from this phantom who’s become part of our family mythology—a Jersey Devil who will spook us even
when our Pine Barrens no longer share an address—this spirit that connects the four of us in ways that only we understand.
One day, when I’ve retired to that county library in the sky and my children have toasters in their own homes,
they’ll know I’ve come for a visit when, half-asleep in their kitchens, they go to toast two slices of (preferably) split-top wheat but find their toaster haunted:
Toast Ghost.
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John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of South Jersey. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University's Writer's Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and Painted Bride Quarterly's Slush Pile Podcast. Recent publications include: Rattle, New Ohio Review, Waxing & Waning, Gigantic Sequins, and Sonora Review. His chapbook, No Lightsabers in the Kitchen, was selected as a winner of the 2025 Poetry Box Chapbook contest and is forthcoming in early 2026. Find out more at: www.johnwojtowicz.com
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Two Poems by Andrew Ray Williams
Mirror at Eleven
after Vincent Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)
I was eleven when the mirror started talking.
Using familiar voices, it told me to linger—
tilt your chin, suck in.
Before too long, I wanted to carve my face,
like a Thanksgiving bird.
I know they say that Vincent was a madman
for removing his ear from the world,
but I wonder if he was just tired of listening.
He who has no ears to hear,
let him no longer hear.
Strange Laughter
This morning I awoke laughing.
Not just a chuckle,
but the kind where you wipe tears
from your temples,
where your ribs ache afterward.
But I couldn’t remember why.
Just a memory—thumbing
through a jar of multicolored buttons
at my grandparents’ house,
playing marbles with my cousins.
So I lay there, dazed,
like Sarah, long past hoping—
laughing at the promise
of a joy she thought was gone,
and somehow still arrived,
too strange to be anything but holy.
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Andrew Ray Williams is a poet based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He holds a PhD from Bangor University (Wales, UK) and is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, A Weathered Ship (2025). His work appears in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Eunoia Review, Locust Shells Journal, Red Eft Review, The Lake, and tiny wren lit. Connect with him on Instagram: @arw_poetry.
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