Sauna: Early Arab Spring

Poetry by Sarah Leavens, Fall 2012 

steam rises from hot rocks

sweat, oil, eucalyptus

blurred breasts

beside me

needle my pores,

force

my evaporation:

somewhere,

someone i have never

met

catches

in a throng

of waving fists.

i drip

here, imagine myself trapped

gasping.

my towel falls

apart

at my hip; I press

its wet edge

to my chest,

I cannot

let it

open.

somewhere,

adhan rises,

lilted protest, a people flips

from back onto belly

and things sizzle.

my thighs

are pink

and must

be kept

covered.

I do not

understand

the easy intimacy

of words,

bodies—

the shape

of things shorn:

a nude cedar sauna, the fullthroated

voice of intention.

I cannot

cry

at this: my mouth

is chapped

Sarah Leavens is the 2012-13 “Out of the Forge” writer-in-residence in Braddock, PA. She received her MFA in Poetry and Nonfiction from Chatham University, where she served as the Margaret Whitford Fellow and organized the monthly reading series Word Circus in collaboration with Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery. Her recent work has appeared in Fourth River and Weave; she teaches writing and visual art in Pittsburgh.