Jones’s hybrid poem, which begins as prose, describes a family funeral. The speaker, an unnamed figure who uses the third-person plural, sits in a car while Jack drives quickly toward the funeral, sixteen hours through North Carolina. The speaker witnesses Grandaddy’s body and her mourning Grandmama in a home full of people and food. 

The speaker, with her cousin and a girl named Toya, goes to the woods to drink and smoke. In the hot night, they discuss Grandaddy’s death in his bed, and the speaker keeps accepting drinks from her cousin. Her cousin leans toward her, and they embrace. Toya warns them of copperheads. Wary of alligators, they see one and run “cuz gator made for water / but children born for land” (17).