Rio Cortez: The Poet’s Persona in Golden Ax

Overview of the Persona

The speaker in Rio Cortez’s Golden Ax is a first-person lyric “I” who functions as a contemporary Black woman wrestling with personal and ancestral history. While the author’s own biography bleeds into the poems—Cortez’s note explicitly names her family, her upbringing in Utah, and her move to New York City—the persona is best understood as a crafted literary voice that gathers the book’s many threads. She is neither a straightforward memoirist nor a fictional character; rather, she is the central consciousness through which Afropioneerism, duality, motherhood, and ecological grief are felt and interrogated. Her name, “Rio,” appears in the poem “I’m Forced to Imagine There Are Two of Me Here,” where she instructs that other self to “remind them of our one white grandmother.” This naming anchors the persona in a river (Spanish río) and a place (Rio Grande, Rio de Janeiro), hinting at fluid identity.

Role and Voice

The persona does not drive a plot but instead guides the reader through vignettes spanning time: childhood in Utah, adolescence, early adulthood in Harlem, and later scenes of motherhood. Her role is that of a seeker—searching archives for forgotten ancestors, confronting racial microaggressions, and grappling with the weight of lineage. In the Author’s Note (Chapter 2), Cortez introduces the terms “Afropioneerism” and “Afrofrontierism,” and the persona embodies these concepts by refusing to let the Western landscape be seen only through a white pioneer lens. She reclaims the desert, the canyons, and the aspen groves as spaces where Black lives have always been present.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Motivations:

• To understand her place in a family history marked by enslavement, westward migration, and religious tension (the LDS church’s ban on Black priesthood).
• To reconcile her Utah upbringing with her urban East Coast present.
• To integrate the fragmented selves that code-switching and racial passing have created.

Key Traits (supported by explicit evidence):

• Self-aware and introspective: In “I learn to shoot a bow” (Chapter 12), she analyzes the canal “not unlike my mother: low as it want to be and fullest when it rains.” She connects the landscape to family character.
• Combative and tender: In “Double Threat” (Chapter 24), she spits at the sidewalk near her partner’s feet after a jealous exchange, yet later lets a white stranger’s repeated question shrink her. The poem exposes vulnerability beneath aggression.
• Resourceful and imaginative: In “Family Tree at Earth’s Surface” (Chapter 48), she uses archives, attics, oral tradition, and intuition to find ancestors, but eventually stops counting names when she finds emotional comfort in the unnamed “Nameless mother and her son.”
• Fiercely protective of her inner life: In “Two of Me Here” (Chapter 11), she practices “not dancing,” pulls her hair back, and bites her lips to make them smaller—actions intended to suppress visible Blackness and fit in. This shows a survival mechanism that later becomes a source of tension.
• Open to the supernatural: In “An Ancestor Maybe” (Chapter 22), a man dressed for dancing appears at the foot of her bed in Harlem. She meets his gaze without fear, showing her willingness to receive ancestral visitations.

Chronological Arc

The persona’s journey can be traced through the collection’s loose chronology:

1. Childhood / Early Adolescence (Utah)

   • “I learn to shoot a bow” (Ch. 12): A canal behind the house, a grandfather carving a bow, the speaker aiming at cardboard flats. She declares herself “Orion” with two birth stories—one mythological (sea god, forest mother) and one rootless (no mother at all). This establishes the duality that will persist.
   • “Marion’s 1982 Chevrolet Citation” (Ch. 14): Days from her sixteenth birthday, she imagines driving away. The car is called “The Killing Machine” by friends, yet she covers it in “cosmic fish” and presses her foot down, asking “where do I go I wonder without them.” The moment is brimming with departure.

2. Young Adulthood / Urban Life (New York)

   • “Black Annie Hall” (Ch. 21): The speaker as a stylish, cultured woman—tennis, white wine, analyst, trouble hailing a cab. The poem catalogues a contemporary Black life lived in predominantly white spaces, with the spider and the boyfriend’s request to not smoke marijuana highlighting racialized friction.
   • “Ancestor Maybe” (Ch. 22): A spectral visit in a Harlem apartment with a leaking roof and pigeon cooing. The speaker shows the ancestor “one version of my Arawak face,” acknowledging Indigenous heritage.
   • “Double Threat” (Ch. 24): A post-dinner confrontation on Irving Place—jealousy, a spit, a white woman’s unsolicited concern. The persona experiences both anger and the need to perform safety (“Yes, thank you, please, yes”).
   • “I’m Forced to Imagine There Are Two of Me Here” (Ch. 11): The most explicit split-self poem. She calls the other “Rio” and instructs her to remind others of their white grandmother. They hit a deer in Little Cottonwood Canyon, then share “the same bite of a cracked rib.” The act of killing and kissing the animal suggests a ritual of mercy between two selves.

3. Pregnancy and Motherhood

   • “Partum” (Ch. 13): Addressed to the unborn child as “Little God, Oldest Friend.” The speaker paces, cut open, drinking thistle and yolk. She recalls passing through “the bright red towns of my youth” (Loa, Escalante), wondering if she and the child have touched hands before—a hint of reincarnation or ancestral continuity.
   • “Ars Poetica with Mother and Dogs” (Ch. 45): Her own mother appears unexpectedly in the poem, dressed in a horse-print sheath, dripping lake water. The speaker breaks a vase and grabs her mother’s hand instead of asking her to leave. This negotiation between pushing away and holding on recurs throughout the persona’s relationships.

4. Deciding to Leave

   • “Eden” (Ch. 49): Standing at the kitchen window washing her daughter’s dishes, she watches an elk on the mountain. She questions whether she is home or just visiting, then answers herself: “really leaving now.” The snow cup has melted into “the summer people” they truly are. The poem ends with moving “through the told story of my life,” signaling a transformative departure, perhaps from the West itself.

5. Integration and Acceptance

   • “Family Tree at Earth’s Surface” (Ch. 48): The search ends with a nameless mother and son. The speaker reflects on a different kind of knowing—an arc in which the moon is mothered—and loses the impulse to count names. This marks a shift from genealogy to felt connection.
   • “Bayuk” (Ch. 42) and “Frasier Crane Toasts No One in Particular” (Ch. 38) show the persona inhabiting different voices (Muddy Waters’s bayou, Frasier’s refined taste), demonstrating the multiplicity that she now claims rather than suppresses.

Relationships

With the “Rio” Double

The poem “Two of Me Here” is central. The persona splits into a speaking “I” and a bodily “Rio” who must code-switch and perform whiteness. The deer scene externalizes the violence of this splitting: they kill an animal together and kiss its bloodied mouth. This can be interpreted as a symbolic reunification—mercy toward the self that was sacrificed for survival.

With Ancestors

The persona’s relationship with the dead is intimate and practical. She visits archives (Ch. 48), receives visitations (Ch. 22), and writes poems that name specific relatives (Paul C. Howell, Abner Howell, Byrdie Langon in the Author’s Note). Yet she also honors those without names: the “Nameless mother and her son.” The ancestor figure in Chapter 22 is dressed for dancing, and she shows him an Arawak face—a gesture that suggests both recognition and mutual unknowing.

With Mother

In “Ars Poetica with Mother and Dogs,” the mother barges into the poem unexpectedly. The persona breaks a vase the mother “used to love” but then grabs her hand. This ambivalence mirrors the larger theme of needing to separate while still wanting connection. The mother is also a bridge to the past; the canal in Chapter 12 is “not unlike my mother: low as it want to be and fullest when it rains.”

With Daughter

In “Eden,” the persona washes her daughter’s dishes. The daughter is present as a domestic anchor, but the speaker’s attention is on the elk and the act of leaving. Motherhood is portrayed as both grounding and a catalyst for self-reinvention.

With Lovers

Several poems depict romantic relationships: “Double Threat” (a jealous quarrel), “My Beloved Finds Me Everywhere but Here” (Ch. 39, a poet-lover who can only write her as wave or horse), “Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film” (Ch. 31, a fantasy of aging and falling in love in a coastal home). The persona often feels unseen or misrepresented by partners; in “My Beloved,” she asks to be written into a poem and receives only metaphors that feel like evasion.

Key Decisions and Consequences

• Decision to code-switch / suppress Blackness (Ch. 11): The persona practices not dancing, pulls hair, bites lips. The consequence is a split self that must be reconciled later.
• Decision to get in the car (Ch. 14): She boards the Chevrolet, pressing her foot down. The consequence is the beginning of independence from family and Utah.
• Decision to spit (Ch. 24): A moment of uncontrolled anger toward a partner. The consequence is public shame and the need to perform safety for a white witness.
• Decision to stop counting names (Ch. 48): She abandons the genealogical impulse. The consequence is a renewed emotional connection to the anonymous dead.
• Decision to leave (Ch. 49): She declares she is “really leaving now.” The consequence is an open-ended transformation, moving through the stories that shaped her.

Themes and Symbol Connections

• Afropioneerism: The persona embodies this term by claiming both the Western landscape and her ancestors’ role in settling it. The canal, the bow, the deer, the canyon all become sites of Black history.
• Identity and Duality: The split-self poems dramatize the cost of navigating a predominantly white Mormon community and later, white urban circles. The name “Rio” itself suggests a current that can carry two selves.
• Memory and Ancestry: The persona’s search for ancestors is both archival (Chapter 48) and spiritual (Chapter 22). She learns that feeling connection is more important than full documentation.
• Ecological Grief and Nature: The elk in “Eden,” the canal in Chapter 12, the snow cup, the aspen trees—nature is both a source of solace and a reminder of transience. The persona grieves the loss of a home that may never have fully been hers.
• Motherhood and Fear: In “Partum,” the persona approaches childbirth with awe and terror. The “Little God” is both a child and an ancient presence. Motherhood is shown as a link to the maternal line but also a reason to leave.

5 Book-Specific Questions with Direct Answers

1. Why does the speaker split into two selves in “I’m Forced to Imagine There Are Two of Me Here”?
The explicit action in the poem—practicing not dancing, pulling hair back, biting lips—shows a deliberate effort to suppress markers of Blackness to fit into a white environment. This can be interpreted as an internalization of the pressure to code-switch and pass. The “Rio” self is the one who performs this erasure, while the speaking “I” watches and later participates in a violent merger (the deer killing).

2. What role does the Chevrolet Citation play in the speaker’s coming-of-age arc?
The car is an explicit object: a 1982 Chevrolet Citation, nicknamed “The Killing Machine,” owned by Marion. The speaker covers it in “cosmic fish” and is days from her sixteenth birthday. Pressing the accelerator, she asks “where do I go I wonder without them.” The car symbolizes the gateway to independence and the anxiety of leaving family behind. It also ties the persona to the automotive culture of the West (the canyon sun, the chrome dashboard).

3. How does the persona connect with an ancestor in the poem “An Ancestor Maybe”?
Explicitly, a man “dressed to go dancing” appears at the foot of her bed in her Harlem apartment. She shows him “one version of my Arawak face,” and they look at each other “for some time outside time.” This can be interpreted as a spiritual visitation that acknowledges the speaker’s Indigenous (Arawak) heritage alongside her African ancestry. The fact that he is “maybe” an ancestor allows the poem to remain open to ambiguity.

4. What is the significance of the speaker’s decision to leave in “Eden”?
The poem explicitly states: “I am / really leaving now.” The speaker stands at a kitchen window washing her daughter’s dishes and watches an elk on a mountain. She questions whether she is home or visiting, then decides to answer for herself. The “snow cup” (a basin of snow that has melted) suggests that a temporary identity has thawed into a truer self (“the summer people”). Leaving means moving through the “told story of my life,” implying a conscious break from inherited narratives.

5. How does the persona handle the limits of genealogical research in “Family Tree at Earth’s Surface”?
Explicitly, the speaker uses expert knowledge, archives, attics, oral tradition, intuition, and the self, but the search leads only to “a Nameless mother and her son.” She compares the unnamed mother to the moon, a tide-maker. The poem ends with the speaker losing “the impulse to keep counting and recording names.” This can be interpreted as a shift from factual reconstruction to emotional connection—accepting that some ancestors will never be named but can still be honored through imagination and care.