I’ve carried a coffin three times.
My backyard, Jackson, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2022)
Birmingham, 2019
My Nana was buried in a purple-and-chrome Cadillac-sized behemoth. She was tiny by the time she passed and likely didn’t break a hundred pounds, but my cousins and I swayed under the weight of that thing. The cemetery was old, and crowded with granite, and I gritted my teeth as my knuckles scraped another headstone while my aunt filmed us staggering to the rough-cut rectangle in the red clay.
Memphis, Tennessee, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
Oxford, 2010
There are four of us carrying this little wooden box. It would barely weigh anything if I was carrying it by myself. It’s so light it’s almost pretend, except we are not pretending. It’s just now spring but today it is terribly humid, and sweat is pouring down my collar as we try not to go too fast, and then, try not to go too slow. But there is no way we can get this right.
Big Star grocery, Belmont, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
Ridgeland, 2022
There are six of us, each with a small white rose boutonnière pinned over our hearts. The weight is solid, imposing, but not overwhelming. There is a thick bed of pine straw on the slope heading to the tent, and for a moment I worry about slipping, but only for a moment. I have to plant my right foot to pivot on the marker for a long-deceased captain from the U.S. Army.
The wood is a deep burnished brown, pecan with brass handles. I retreat back to the pine straw and try to listen to the preacher, who reads quietly from Psalm 23. There is a neighborhood built up to the south of the graveyard, and I can hear the distant noise of a kid dribbling, then clunking her basketball off a goal. Surely goodness and mercy boomp shall follow me boomp all the days of my life clonk.
Mississippi River from south of Memphis, Tennessee, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
Later that day, I sit and drink iced coffee with my niece, and she shows me the frog tattooed on her left inside bicep, just above the elbow, and the toad on her right. Before going to bed I’ll post a picture of the toad on my Instagram story, because I think it’s a more interesting tattoo. I put a Weezer song playing over it (“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”) since she likes them, and I’ll write on the picture that it’s a frog instead of a toad to aggravate her. I eat popcorn for dinner.
“BACKYARD ROSES” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.