Jonathan Kistner
Unloading my car,
I set all the groceries on the garage platform.
Nana heard me and opened the door.
I told her not to bring anything inside.
“I got it,” I said.
She was a housewife in the 60’s
and was inclined to help anyway.
Once everything was inside,
I found Nana unloading the groceries.
“Last time you helped things went missing.”
I told her to let me do it,
so she sat at the counter and watched carefully
as I put the groceries on the shelves and in the refrigerator.
“Did you get ice-cream at the store?” she asked.
I chuckled. “We already have ice-cream.
You had some last night.”
Nana looked at me very seriously.
She wasn’t upset but seemed despondent.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “My mind—it’s leaving.”
She rested her elbows on the counter
and massaged her temples.
“Especially when I’m looking for something,
I pray to God. ‘Please God, just help me find what I’m looking for.’”
She paused, looking back at me, “It’s the dementia.”
Jonathan Kistner is an ASU alumni class of 2016. He has his BA in English with emphasis in Creative Writing. Jonathan has served as a poetry editor for ASU’s Canyon Voices Literary and Art Magazine. He is also one of the founding editors of rinky dink press, which publishes micropoetry micro-zines. His poetry has previously been featured in Write On, Downtown Issue 9 and 10 along with Canyon Voices Issue 12. Currently, Jonathan is experimenting with different types of poetry. He strives to incorporate the human experience in everything he writes and is proud to call himself an LGBTQ poet.
Write On, Downtown 