Designer's Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025No Lightsabers in the Kitchen explores the humor, strangeness, and gravity of parenting, partnership, and the small, meaningful rituals of everyday life. This collection is about trying to stay present, screw up a little less, and pay attention to the moments that might matter most. It's about what happens when a dad with a soft spot for ghosts, flowering shrubs, hitchhikers, and reptiles starts writing poems instead of fixing the bathroom door.---Review Excerpts---"... In a world that can be confusing and difficult, Wojtowicz gives himself, his wife, his children, and you, dear reader, permission to wonder, laugh, love, explore, and imagine. You are encouraged to be followed by the moon, romance beaches, condition doorknobs, and nurse turtles, but please, no lightsabers in the kitchen- leave the ghost of you in peace."-DIMITRI REYES, author of Papi Pichón"... There may not be a Jedi in his kitchen or a Millennium Falcon in his garage, but there is so much joy in the wild domesticity of these poems, you'll want to slow down from hyperdrive to enjoy them."-PETER E. MURPHY, author of You Too Were Once on Fire"Full of humor and surprise, John Wojtowicz's No Lightsabers in the Kitchen humanizes the speaker by showing his loving side as a father, despite his struggles in other areas of life.... Ultimately, John's poetry invites us to reexamine our own relationships and listen and respond to the smaller voices in our circle who have the power to lift us up and keep us there."-SHAWN R. JONES, author of Date of Birth
