Summary

In this poem, Kima Jones describes the journey home to North Carolina for a funeral. The poem is split into two sections and includes several lines written in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Each section begins with the phrase, “Here’s the down south story we didn’t tell you” (15).

In the first section, Jack, one of the speaker’s family members, drives for sixteen hours straight, until she cannot feel her feet. The speaker is a passenger in the car. As Jack drives, she refuses to stop along the way from the unnamed starting point. Jack, who is driving, and the speaker, who remains a passenger, do not stop until they reach home. The speaker points out that with each mile, they are moving closer to death. When they arrive at their grandparents’ house, their grandfather is laid out in the...