Betsy Howard

Full Term, Mid-July

My sundress clings around my middle damp.

A fetus pees inside. But does it sweat?

Today it must. For all the shade my taut

abdomen gives, I know I am set to broil.

I’ve left behind that basal body temp

with modest peaks. Unmitigated heat,

like mother earth, I’m magma at my core.

An outstretched heel imprints my sticky skin

within, to breathe by suffocating me.

Betsy Howard is as an assistant professor of literature at Bethlehem College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and an affiliate researcher with the Center for the Premodern World (Univ. Minnesota). Her recent academic work includes essays in The Hopkins Quarterly Review and Victorian Poetry, and her recent poems have appeared in Ekstasis, Ad Fontes, and New Verse Review.