Golden Ax: Questions and Answers

What does Marion’s 1982 Chevrolet Citation symbolize in the collection?

The car represents both freedom and danger. Friends call it “The Killing Machine,” yet Marion says it has been asleep for the speaker. Days before turning sixteen, decorating the hatchback with cosmic fish and pressing the accelerator shows anticipation of independence. The chrome dashboard reflects the speaker in fragments, capturing a self still being formed. In chapter 14, “Marion’s 1982 Chevrolet Citation,” the car becomes a threshold to adulthood and a symbol of the risks that come with leaving childhood behind. For more on coming‑of‑age themes, see the characters page for Marion.

Why does “Frasier Crane Toasts No One in Particular” celebrate small daily rituals?

The poem values solitude and sensory pleasure over grand achievements. Toasts to completing a radio rotation, bathing in calendula, hitting a squash volley, or sipping a cortado elevate ordinary moments into ceremonies. The only irrepressible sound is rainfall—an image of nature’s independence from human performance. In chapter 38, Cortez shows that happiness can be found in self‑contained acts, resisting the compulsion to share every joy. This contrasts with the dissatisfaction portrayed in Black Frasier Crane.

What is the significance of the unknown man at the foot of the speaker’s bed in “An Ancestor Maybe”?

The man, dressed for dancing, appears wordlessly in the speaker’s Washington Heights apartment. He radiates benevolence, and the speaker shows him her Arawak face. The encounter feels timeless, suggesting a possible ancestral visitation. In chapter 22, the ambiguity (the man is never named) deliberately leaves the identity open, blending urban decay with Indigenous heritage. The moment underscores how the collection treats ancestry as both a tangible presence and a mystery—a theme explored further in memory and ancestry.

How does the title “Far Enough” connect to Byrdie Lee Howell Langon’s legacy?

The phrase comes from the closing line of a poem by her pastor, Jerry Ford, which honors Byrdie for drawing out “all the beautiful things that many have not looked far enough to find.” Chapter 3 explains that Byrdie self‑published Utah and the Early Black Settlers. The title “Far Enough” becomes a metaphor for the effort required to truly see another person or a community’s hidden value. It also echoes the collection’s broader insistence on looking past surface narratives to recover Black Western history.

In “The Idea of Ancestry,” how does the speaker experience connection to her family’s past?

Standing in Millcreek Canyon, the speaker sees water her grandmother fished, timber felled by her great‑great‑grandfather, and hears aspen that sang the same song for them. She recalls buttermilk and fresh tomatoes—simple joys that make ancestry feel immediate. The poem ends with her lying like a calf in wildflowers, suggesting timeless belonging. In chapter 9, memory and nature merge to affirm continuity across generations. This chapter complements the Afropioneerism theme by grounding it in sensory experience.

Why do the questions addressed to Paul C. Howell in chapter 34 remain unanswered?

The poem asks whether Paul, enslaved and later the first Black police detective in Utah, would rejoice after storms and if he loved the wind. No reply is offered. The silence respects the unknowable inner life of an enslaved person—historical records can document facts but not feelings. By leaving the questions suspended, Cortez emphasizes the limits of genealogical recovery. The chapter functions as a meditation on historical trauma and the dignity of unanswered pain, connecting to the character page for Paul C. Howell.

What does the speaker mean when she says “To be denied the beginning” in “I learn to shoot a bow”?

The line refers to the canal that runs between railroad tracks and her back porch—a waterway that, unlike the River Jordan, has no sacred or clear origin. The speaker crosses a timber bridge her family built and practices archery while imagining herself as Orion, who has two birth stories. One version gives him a forest mother, the other no mother at all. In chapter 12, the act of building the bridge becomes a metaphor for creating one’s own origin story when the official beginning is erased or denied—a core identity and duality theme.

How does “Black Annie Hall” use the Woody Allen film to explore racial identity?

The title references Annie Hall, but the character is a Black woman navigating ordinary urban moments: waiting to see the 1920 film Within Our Gates, failing to hail a cab after her analyst, and being asked by her white boyfriend not to smoke marijuana. The poem layers racial friction onto scenes that in the original film would be race‑neutral. In chapter 21, the final image—driving eighty on the West Side Highway with the top down, hair unmoved—asserts autonomy. The intertextuality highlights how race complicates even mundane leisure, a key tension in the Black Annie Hall character study.

What is the significance of accidentally breaking the Mammy salt and pepper shakers?

The speaker breaks a pair of shakers whose stereotyped features—black faces, housecoats, red mouths, white eyes—embody a degrading caricature. The broken pieces go “into forgetting,” implying that the accident performs a quiet erasure of a racist object. In chapter 40, Cortez turns a mundane kitchen accident into an act of resistance. The brevity of the poem (fourteen short lines) mirrors the suddenness of the break, and the word “forgetting” suggests that not all erasure is negative; sometimes it can be a way to dispose of harmful symbols.

How does the dissociative experience in chapter 26 relate to the collection’s treatment of the self?

The speaker describes feeling split in two, watching herself on the subway and in a cab, and “ghosting” through a hole in her mouth. This echoes the scene in Annie Hall but grounds it in racial and emotional detachment. Indifference becomes a bodily knowledge. In chapter 26, the dissociation is tied to a partner struggling with buttons and the speaker filling in a crossword box—mundane actions that emphasize numbness. This fragment of self‑observation recurs throughout the book, notably in “I’m Forced to Imagine There Are Two of Me Here”, where dual identity is a survival strategy.

What role does safety play in “Black Mary Wilkie”?

The speaker describes feeling safe enough to take night walks with her lover, owning a dachshund, eating lox on the Sabbath, and watching sunrises at the East River. This portrait of urban Black womanhood emphasizes security and intimacy—luxuries that are historically precarious. The poem ends by thinking of “that scene with the lobster,” a reference to Annie Hall that juxtaposes cosmic questions with everyday worry. In chapter 23, safety is both achieved and fragile; the stolen kiss in the rain suggests that vulnerability and trust coexist. For more on recurring motifs, see the Afropioneerism theme.

How does “Black Frasier Crane” critique privilege despite material abundance?

The title character lives in a multi‑generational household with staff, reserved parking, and the ability to complain about espresso ratios. Yet she is lonely and prone to overthinking. The poem introduces a “beast” that consumes without satisfaction, leaving only “the mind’s endless narration.” In chapter 36, Cortez questions whether happiness is possible when one already has everything. The sister figure—another Black Crane—provides an empathetic foil, joking about Freud. The poem suggests that material wealth feeds an inner dissatisfaction that no acquisition can cure, a tension central to the Black Frasier Crane character.

In “Self-Portrait in a Tanning Bed,” what does the speaker’s reflection reveal about racial identity?

Lying naked in a tanning bed, the only Black customer, the speaker first sees herself as a “reverse coon” but then likes her darker, time‑traveler appearance. She contemplates dying in the machine, yet the moment is also comic and sad. In chapter 20, the tanning salon becomes a space where race is both hyper‑visible and absurdly performable. The speaker’s shifting perception—from ironic detachment to genuine appreciation of her darkened skin—illustrates how identity is mediated by technology and gaze. This vulnerability connects to motherhood and fear themes.

What does the deer‑hitting scene in chapter 11 reveal about the speaker’s dual self?

After hitting a deer in Little Cottonwood Canyon, the speaker opens the car doors and shares a bite of the cracked rib with the animal, then kisses it. This gesture of mercy occurs between the two selves—Rio and The Dark—that the speaker has split in order to assimilate. In chapter 11, the deer becomes an object of shared tenderness, bridging the divided persona. The act of “showing each other mercy” suggests that survival requires both internal negotiation and compassion. For more on this character dynamic, see the poet’s persona page.

Why does “Family Tree at Earth’s Surface” end with the speaker losing the impulse to record names?

After searching with expert knowledge, archives, oral tradition, and intuition, the speaker arrives at “Nameless mother and her son.” She compares the unnamed mother to the moon, a tide‑maker. Then she realizes a different kind of knowing: an arc in which the moon herself is mothered. In chapter 48, this realization brings comfort, and she stops counting and recording. The poem acknowledges that genealogical research has limits—some ancestors remain nameless—but that emotional connection to the unnamed past can be more valuable than a complete tree. This acceptance of incompleteness resonates with the ending explained analysis.