toms

I’m in the kitchen writing a poem. Outside the trees are on the turn. I’m wearing my grey cardigan that I’ve been kind enough to share with endangered moths. I look up from the page and spot Tom Jones out the back garden, wearing an olive tweed jacket and shooting hoops with my son’s basketball. He looks in at me and nods. It’s more than I could hope for. He doesn’t seem to realise he’s trespassing on my poem. That’s fame for you. And as I’m remembering the beauty of the wood earlier, its leafy aurora an impressionist’s dream, Tom Hardy strolls into the poem in a light grey Levi’s t-shirt, just saunters in the side gate, begins shooting the breeze with Tom Jones, giving him tips on his shot. He doesn’t see me writing at the table or the chrome cafetière, the elephant plate. But I can see him clearly, his two lips bumping off each other like lifeboats as he speaks and laughs, though we’re miles from water. But I can’t get caught up in bedtime stories when I’m considering leaves, reddening, sugars trapped as the cold nights come in. I look out to check on the ivy that stomps down the fence like dinosaur prints, only to see Tom Cruise from Cocktail in the corner of the garden. He’s eyeing up my new bergamot plant with its one unripened fruit. The other Toms haven’t noticed him. Jones has put the ball over. I’m already cross at all the interruption when the doorbell goes. Cliff, the postman, I suspect, but no, there standing in a trio of Toms are Hanks, Lawlor and Selleck. They look right past me and start singing “Stille Nacht.” Tom Selleck’s mustache has grown a beard. They sing beautifully. They’re at Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht when I hear a commotion out back, I run through the house, into the garden. Cruise has stolen the bergamot. Hardy spotted him and is chasing him down the alley. He wrestles him to the ground, pins him down, Jones catches up, bends over Cruise, gets right in his face and shouts “What’s new, Pussycat?”

Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. She holds an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, berlin lit, And Other Poems, 14 Magazine, Banshee, Cambridge Review of Books, The Madrid Review and elsewhere.