Work by Josiah Jenkins

New! Added 9/30
Trout Stream of Consciousness:

Open and shut
Your Mouth
Off
Stage Hand
It to you
Shouldn’t have
And to hold
Out
For Lunch
Meat head
My Way
Station wagon
Train employees
Don’t eat toast
Of the town
Hall
S Cough Drops
The Ball
And Chain
Link Fence
Me In
Case
Closed

New! Added 9/30
Office:

He filed paperwork by the window
The janitor listened to jazz
Played over the stereo muzak of the hall
An intern
My age and station
Plays solitaire instead of entering data
While his best friend thinks
How to sneak a cigarette
In the bathroom where someone doesn’t wash their hands
Before spreading his disease to the board of directors
Fighting over visual art in the ad
And who to fire for the shareholders
The CEOs secretary won’t fix the typo
In the company memo
And her husband is flirting with the temp
Even though he loves his wife
The mail clerk passes through
And passes out when he drinks too much
The communications lady hands out brownies
Which she knows aren’t very good at all
For insurance
And the one she wants to replace
Falls asleep on his paperwork
When down the hall
Someone’s child is staying home from school
Even though she knows he isn’t sick
As the new hire quits filing
To look out the window for half-an-hour
On company time
And sees a plane fly in

Ode To A Toaster

My Toaster is like the moon
Sadly My hand will probably never go inside either
And If I did put my hand in
Then I would certainly be hurt
The toaster would scald my hand
Blistering it to look like the moon
The moon would never let my hand inside
Because I don't own a space suit
And would suffocate first
Allowing my hand to maybe be crushed
Like a cube
Into a toaster shape
They are the same in other ways
Both of them light up when I am hungry at night
If the moon is made of cheese
I will have to put cheese in my toaster
Because they are so darn similar
Neither of them have ever gone jogging
And when married couples fight
They both fly
The moon around the earth
And the toaster around the kitchen
I cannot tell their byproducts apart
Because peanut butter tastes delicious on both
Though I'm not sure if I've ever eaten toast
When they come to earth
They both cause fire
Especially in our atmosphere
Where toasters burn
Like the city of Constantinople
During the Crusades
And when the moon goes through the atmosphere
You can see all the people go scampering for cover
Or maybe it is for butter and jam
The two are easily confused
It is hard to even speak of the joy
That would come from a moon-sized toaster
All it would take would be moon-sized bread
And we'd solve world hunger
I wish my toaster was spherical

Stalling Out

Scientists now say that the typical male loses eleven minutes of his life every time he smokes a cigarette. In fact, a scientist would tell you that a man would lose about two months of his life in his twenty-five years of smoking. But none of these stats were true, because Reggie Sims didn't believe them. He'd smoked for 25 years, and he planned to smoke for twenty-five more. But, in spite of these grand aspirations, Reggie was in trouble.

You see, government buildings have a certain stigma about smoking where there is a no smoking sign…even if you "did it all by the vent". But maybe I'm getting ahead myself, perhaps by eleven minutes. So, if you'd like, you can leave the room, or you can lose eleven minutes of your life here, while you find out about Mr. Reggie Sims, smoker esquire.

Reggie wasn't some sort of horrendous wretch, a horrible person, a bad person, or even a particularly bright person. He was just the sort of person who preferred Camels to kids. He had tried to stop, once upon a three months earlier, but to no avail, as he found that nicotine and nicotine on your arm are a nauseating mix, sort of like cyanide and just about anything.

Reggie was not a fan of the sacchriney brand of songfest the music teacher usually put together, though the set was wonderful in that there were no nails showing. Still, children weren't (and aren't) good singers, so Reggie took the liberty of excusing himself to the bathroom. For those of you who've been in the school, it's the one between the "No Smoking" sign and the anti-tobacco poster.

After pretending to use a urinal until one of the elder gentlemen of the town finished washing his hands, Mr. Sims proceeded to a stall, wherein he stood upon the toilet seat to get closer to the vent. There was probably some saying about that, something like "A stitch in time saves nine," or "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink," or maybe even "Oh my goodness, the principal just walked in!"

Having to face the facts, Reggie walked out of the puce-green rusted out stall and into purgatory.

"I take it you didn't see the sign out front of the door," the principal said, though Reggie secretly suspected that he probably did not take it that way.

"Which one, the No Smoking sign, or the 'You Smoke You Choke'?" Reggie questioned, proving that smooth wasn't a skill that he'd acquired in life.

"Either one should have been a tip-off," the principal glared.

Having been told once that he was very spontaneous, Reggie knew how to handle his current dilemma, "Well, Mr. Brown, I think there's somewhere in the law that says you can smoke, as long as it's by the vent, which I was."

Geographically, Reggie had been correct, he certainly had been standing by the vent, but legally, his logic was flawed. The principal took the cigarette from Reggie's mouth and stared off into space, or rather the yellow tile of the floor. Reggie sweat in high stress situations, like when he once tried to hide the arm that he had broken while jumping from his neighbor's rooftop. But now he sweat more, and his mind began wandering.

What if the principal kicked him out, what would little Tyler think? The principal wouldn't be that cruel though…or would he? Maybe as some twisted justice, the principal would make him sing on stage. What if during his son's solo, the principal sent him up and told the whole world that he was a smoker. Then he'd probably have some kind of heart attack. Then he might go to hell, or wherever it is that people who smoke go to. So for all eternity he would swim around with all those people who smoked, and drank, and never used their blinkers when turning left. And what if at his funeral his grandma, her knees shaking uncontrollably, got up there and spat on his grave then cried herself to…

"Well," the principal reasoned, "I'll let you go this time. Your son's got a big role as Earth, and his solo is coming up. You can go."

"Can I sleep?"

"Sure, but you'd better get going."

Reggie Sims walked out the rusted-out, white-paint-schlocked door.

"By the vent, huh?" the principal thought, and he climbed up onto the toilet seat to follow the law.