I hope the sun won’t ever burn out.
Some things seem to last forever.
Our old stove still heats up
the solar system of the kitchen.
Nana says it’s been blazing
for about 40 years.
She loves to cook on it.
We love to eat.
When she cooks, she’s beautiful.
She revolves around the stove
like a planet in her very own solar system.
by Herb Kitson & Ray-J Nelson
—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration
Herb Kitson & Ray-J Nelson: “We have been working on projects together for a long time and enjoyed working on poetry collaboration for Rattle. Ray-J (age 13) is the content/ideas man, and I’m the form-style-structure man. To borrow from Robert A. Pirsig, Ray-J is the Romantic mode of understanding; I’m the Classical mode. He either wrote down or told me what he wanted to convey, and I assisted him in putting the material in ‘poetic’ form. We had lots of fun trying to use metaphor in each poem. Each of us contributed two metaphors. He wants to be a great writer someday; I’m pushing him toward medicine because we poets are poor. Maybe he’ll be another William Carlos Williams.”
