Frank Haunts Me Across a Decade (Hazem Fahmy on Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo)
Half Mystic Press’ newest poetry collection, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo by Hazem Fahmy, comes out on March 18th. Hazem is a writer and critic from Cairo. His debut chapbook, Red//Jild//Prayer, won the 2017 Diode Editions Contest. A Kundiman and Watering Hole Fellow, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2020, AAWW, The Boston Review, and Prairie Schooner. His criticism has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Mubi Notebook, Reverse Shot, and Mizna. His performances have been featured on Button Poetry and Write About Now. He regularly writes about remakes and other media matters on Medium @hazfahmy. To kick off the virtual tour for Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo, Hazem joins us on the Half Mystic blog to share three never-before-seen poems from the book.
By 2020, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo had become a kind of phantom—a project that haunted me, yet whose future seemed illusive. I’d practically given up on it. I would revisit the poems every now and then, but for the most part did not genuinely believe that the manuscript would ever be released in full. I’d made my peace with the thing until I was stuck at home in Houston in the first summer during the pandemic and found myself, once again, obsessively listening to Frank Ocean, feeling his music morph and unravel my writing. The first poem to come of this period was, fittingly, “Frank Haunts Me Across a Decade.” It was the perfect catalyst for a return to the project, a reminder of what I’d found in Frank’s music all those years ago that would not let me sleep at night.
Frank Haunts Me Across a Decade
Every other day a phone call from across the world
brings me to my knees, a micro-sob story I recount
in the mirror. Every time the connection cuts off, the
sound evaporates like a stolen breath. Frank, the specter
of all my summers—the unmentionable shadow—dyed
his hair green and suddenly there was an entire field
of possibilities, reminiscent of the constellation of clubs
off the highway in Houston. From the airport, all worlds
seem possible, ones lost and forgotten. I was never one
for making a saint out of anything, let alone a man
who makes music I cry to. On a rare cold morning
in Austin, I biked to a theater, unsettlingly aware
of my own temporal nature. In L.A.,
Frank was the soundtrack to every car ride, even
though I never played him once. In Houston,
Frank haunted the stereo, became the call
of the American night. I despise how wide
the world seemed, the sheer unfathomability
of a highway ending, let alone an ocean
running out of water. I have known nights
of ungodly solitude. Yet I have also known
the catastrophe of the unexpected phone call,
that everyday shit. The concert was not the holy
site I once led myself to believe. Music, at the end
of the day, can only do so much. I am learning to call
things disruptive instead of radical. Once, hair, sweat
and bad breath became the monikers of the night,
and it was intoxicating. My fear of the mosh pit
never left. I never wanted a single house to be
my world. I am still learning to forget the house
I learned to cook in. The house I stopped speaking
of love in. The house I learned to trust
hands other than mine in. The last couch I slept on
said something about where I was with my father then.
That time, I listened. The cold walk home could be a slow
hell, but it could also be a still kind of heaven. I no longer
await the day I will be happy. A stupid kind of progress.
I have not forgotten that house. Wordlessly I announced
my desperation. I claimed to dream
of a still mind, but I was lying. If you had asked me
what I wanted that year, I would have told you I wanted
to be loved, but even that would not have been enough.
Perhaps the more honest answer: I wanted
the fleeing ecstasy only possible in the minutes
of a Frank Ocean song. I wanted
to admit that I was a mess in America and be okay
with it. I wanted endless phone calls, to be harangued
ceaselessly by those who needed me. I wanted
and I wanted
and I wanted,
Night Anthem
Some nights I am seized
with an almost uncontrollable desire to banish
Frank from my library. I grow weary
of passion. Some nights I lie
awake in bed listening,
knowing I have doomed
myself to a restless sleep. In ten years,
I never hung a poster of Frank on my wall.
The nights I need unreachable men
to croon me to sleep are less frequent. More common
is the night I crave an isolation I know
I will despise. The brief walls of my closet,
lined with unread books. Every year
I face them and promise they will be no more. I calculate
how many books I would need
to read per week for that to happen. I shut
the door to my closet and lie in bed. I move
on from the almost uncontrollable desire. I am
reminded by my love that whoever convinced me
that time was precarious did not have
my best interests at heart. That includes
myself. I do not
attempt to cease the day. I attempt
to rest at night. I reject the call
of music. I delete the playlist
with the saddest Frank songs. I go
to sleep without reading.
Faith Is the Substance
I’m a mess in America
the truth is obsolete
our daughters and our sons
are candles in the sun
you don’t know how little you matter
until you’re all alone
underneath our legion’s view
feet covered in cut flowers
some fertilizer
I found you laying with Samson and his full head of hair
we escaped him
hopped into my car, drove far
in the sky up above, the birds
domesticated paradise, palm trees and pools
life in the clouds
in the middle of Arkansas
it’s happiness
I saw the sky like I never seen before
with no mask on and a rusty revolver
nothing mattered
grey matter
blue matter
I never ask for much
I’ll take bullshit if that’s all you got
I’m not going back home, no
I won’t be going backwards
Weaving the lyrics of Frank Ocean’s discography, Hazem Fahmy’s Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo is a poetic account of four years of shuffling, a catalogue of the constant in-betweenness of being caught in the middle of two places across an ocean. Exploring themes of family, gender, and the attempt to find meaning outside the confines of the state, Fahmy’s sophomore collection uses the singer’s iconic music and persona as a guidepost to a firmer understanding of the self and the spaces that define it.
For the next ten days, Half Mystic is hosting a virtual tour in collaboration with eight other blogs, journals, and newspapers featuring reviews of Waiting and interviews with Hazem, culminating in an in-person launch on March 18th in New York City. We’ll see you in Brooklyn, and until then, Waiting is available for preorder now.