Isabel Galleymore
Squeezamal™
I’d left the house, citing a walk. 6pm, a few
degrees above freezing.
On somebody’s dashboard,
a soft toy; lilac-furred and
smiling. Baby
monkey-esque. A breast measure
of squishiness. It possessed
an explicitly-loving gaze
I might’ve judged mildly obscene,
but that evening I needed to find the soft
toy benign. The soft
toy was eager to love me.
And it did so, I felt,
comprehensively. In that moment
on the street, a stranger passed
between us
and I saw how its moon-eyed look
remained—adoring him
just as much as me—presumably
capable of adoring wholesale.
The street lights flickered on. I thought of
crying out. It was so indiscriminate
in its loving, I couldn’t help feeling angry,
disappointed in myself.
Animal Product
When my father falls and bruises
his vestigial tail,
or when a catcall fills the street
or when, without a thought, I eat
a little pig comprised of pig
from a bag of sweets,
or when, in the leathery night,
goosebumps hatch across
my skin, instinctively again
my daughter nuzzles for my breast,
which I muzzle by my not
having had her yet, or when
Isabel Galleymore’s debut collection, Significant Other (Carcanet, 2019), won the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize in 2020. Her work has featured in journals such as Poetry, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, and London Review of Books. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.