Fountain of Youth

By Nada Faris

Concerned with endings, resonances, and aftermaths, Fountain of Youth explores the mediation of an Arab female poet on the brink of change, documenting moments of transformation from adolescence to adulthood, from the immature stage of a mental disorder to its mature form, and from post-colonial conditions which led to the cre

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
• Release date: Dec 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781925417258

Nada Faris

Nada Faris is a Kuwaiti writer and performance poet known as "Kuwait's Finest." She is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at Iowa University's International Writing Program (IWP), USA. In 2015, she became a member of the board of trustees for Kuwait's Cultural Circle Prize for the Arabic Short Story (Almultaqa), the Arab world's first international award for short story collections in Arabic. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in The Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction, Economic and Political Weekly, Fanack Chronicle of the Middle East & North Africa, The Operating System, Sukoon, The Indianola Review, and more.

Book preview

I Human affairs. Always in motion.

Eye Drops After a Surgery

Spinoza tells me

inside every atom is a betrayal apple green.

This isn’t a restaurant.

Take back your homely order of sliced cheese and oranges.

This is

a plantation.

Each seed a planet.

Each planet a broken heart

shattering preconceived ideas

into mud and seas from which groves of hope blossom

into hurricanes.

The first sin stimulates the infinite

displaced in tiny particles of sight.

Eye drops after a surgery.

Light-headed, blurry

vision in the haze of seeing

again. Figures taking on their final

forms, colours coming into focus.

An open casket of potential forever on display.

The keyword is dead.

An apology for longing, for prayers

in the silver pool of the moonlight, when the sleepy stumble

on the ground by the frame of the bed

and raise their palms to ask for foolish dreams.

Make me pretty. Help me lose

a couple of inches around my waist.

Might as well inject them

into my wallet, into my face.

Deafen me

in the presence of the ailing, shining

in the silver puddle of the night.

Stun my emotional reaction so I can delight

in another slice of pie.

I asked him to teach me what it means

to perceive without my senses,

without the searing pain of betrayal.

To plant apples in different colours,

fruits without seeds, seeds without planets,

planets without organs, broken beyond repair.

To unkill the keyword and raise it back again.

And he said.

This is

a plantation.

Before the Morning After

The revolution

will not be subsidised

by the government

you’re trying to depose.

Father why would I

follow you into the streets

to stand among the men

and women who vote

against their self-interests?

I know you only want to extend

your influence. Is it not enough

that I love you against

my better judgment?

Did you ever wonder

what your designer clothes

might say about your views

on inequality?

Believe me I get the joke,

when you call us all for burgers

to discuss What’s next?

and I’m sitting here

in national dress, next to

protesters and policemen,

asking for more mustard.

Surely diet and a bit of exercise

are on that list?

Dear Paul Gauguin, from Vincent van Gogh

It cannot revive confidence

or reattach the skin

you sliced on impulse.

Balanced on the ground

were my two feet, firm

even after yours

lunged forward.

Forgiveness is a word

translucent,

unlike the