Jungle

Poetry/Visual Art ~ Franca Mancinelli 
translated from Italian by John Taylor
photographs by Mitar Simikić
​

photo © Mitar Simikić

​whatever I can I heat up over the fire. We found a well-made saucepan. Whoever bivouacked here is perhaps already in Germany. A matter of time, money, and luck. Our guide took the money. He drinks energy drinks from black cans. It tastes like syrup for my baby.
 
*
 
two degrees below zero today. The sun appeared, a circle as clear as a stone. The clothes of my little one have been laid out to dry. In the steely wind of the E70 tollway. Animals that come out at night to reach the other part of the forest, die.
 
His romper suit with hearts is smeared with mud—it rained where we slept yesterday. —I left it on this flimsy fence—there’s no time for laundry. Maybe tomorrow we cross the border.
 
*
 
he couldn’t speak with his friends and family anymore, nor find his bearings with the GPS. —Last night, near the fire, they were talking about an Afghan boy. He had been in the “game” for months. The last time he had come back limping on his one remaining shoe. He was trembling. All that long road from home. . . They found him not far from here. He had climbed a tree, tied himself to a branch, and let himself drop.
 
*
 
we can’t stay here any longer. It’s cold. We don’t have any more money. But we can have luck. Every night I pray. This morning a soul among the forks of some branches appeared to me. Corroded by the rain, it was being lacerated. Kept tightly against someone’s chest and abandoned after a long journey, now it was opening itself to the woods. An ancient voice, it was saying
 
(...) Jericho.
He was rich (...) she asked him (...) he couldn’t. (...).
He ran ahead (...).
 
*
 
I close my eyes tight, they won’t shut. I can’t manage to wall myself up inside, cement the door. —He’s already stuck in his tool. —I close my eyes tight. I see blackness veined with red, the hazy shapes of my ancestors—he works with a pickax, my womb turned to stone. —It’s not death. It’s only one of its grafts.
He keeps digging in the deserted pit. —More seconds of dark blackness.
Now. Pull it out of me. Extract your rotten penis. 

photo © Mitar Simikić

photo © Mitar Simikić

photo © Mitar Simikić

Note: This sequence of five prose texts by Franca Mancinelli results from a trip to Croatia in February 2018 and her participation in the European program Refest: Images and Words on Refugee Routes. She and a few other writers, artists, and photographers, from Italy, Spain, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were chosen to walk along the migrant trails, and to write down, draw, or photograph what they found.
 
The sequence is set in the woods near Adaševci (Serbia), on the border with Croatia. The photos were taken by the Bosnian photographer Mitar Simikić. With the closing of the Croatian border (in March 2016), the refugees on the “Balkan Route” have found themselves trapped between a hostile bureaucracy and risky illegal itineraries.
 
Jungle: this is what the refugees call the wooded areas where they camp out while waiting to cross the border. If discovered, they are pushed back by the police, through violence and humiliation. This is the “game” that is repeated several times, despite the detailed reports of the NGOs.
 
The italicized fragments in the penultimate text refer to the “soul among the forks of some branches.” They are from an Arabic manuscript abandoned in the woods near the refugee camp of Adaševci. The manuscript was found by Mitar Simikić. Thanks to his photograph and to Marway Fawzi’s help, a few fragments have been translated.
 
 

Franca Mancinelli was born in Fano, Italy, in 1981. She is widely considered to be one of the most compelling new voices in contemporary Italian poetry. Her first two collections of verse poetry, Mala kruna (2007) and Pasta madre (2013), are available in John Taylor’s translation as At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (Bitter Oleander Press, 2019). In 2018 appeared in Taylor’s translation her collection of prose poems, The Little Book of Passage (The Bitter Oleander Press). She has participated in international projects such as the Chair Poet in Residence (Kolkata, India, 2019) and Refest: Images and Words on Refugee Routes. From this latter experience was born her Taccuino croato (Croatian Notebook), published in the volume Come tradurre la neve (Anima Mundi, 2019), as well as the sequence “Jungle” that is published here. The sequence will also be included in her forthcoming Italian collection, Tutti gli occhi che ho aperto (Marcos y Marcos Edizioni, September 2020). Her blog-website (https://www.francamancinelli.com/).

photo © Chiara De Luca
​~
​​

---

John Taylor is an American writer, critic, and translator who lives in France. Besides his translations of Franca Mancinelli’s work, he has also recently translated Philippe Jaccottet’s A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings (Seagull Books). He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently The Dark Brightness (Xenos Books), Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press), Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (Bitter Oleander Press), and a “double book,” A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridge (Fortnightly Review), co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis. John Taylor’s website (http://johntaylor-author.com/).
~
​

Mitar Simikić is a documentary photographer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is interested in photo stories in the form of series and long-term projects, a reality photography that examines social values. His website (http://www.mitarsimikic.com/).
~ 
​