The Symbol of Salt in Golden Ax

Salt appears throughout Rio Cortez's Golden Ax in forms both elemental and domestic: the vast Great Salt Lake flats, brine shrimp skeletons, and a pair of Mammy salt shakers broken in a sink. This analysis traces salt as it recurs across the collection, shows how its meaning shifts from scenic wonder to alien transformation to historical reclamation to quiet resistance, and connects the symbol to key characters and themes. Four study questions with answers are included to deepen understanding.

Literal and Recurring Manifestations of Salt

Salt first appears in the book's epigraph. A Nat Love quote describes the Great Salt Lake at sunset as a “great white expanse” glistening in the rays, but the conductor's call pulls the observer back to earth. The lake is a natural marvel, yet its beauty is fleeting, interrupted by the mundane rhythm of travel.

The most concentrated appearance is in Chapter 16, “Salt.” The speaker slips the “silksac” of her body and walks onto the salt flats. She kneels at the shore, reaches into the lake—red as a wound—and drags out a string of bones. She crushes brine shrimp skeletons underfoot and eats eggs in stasis. The lake is “dead” and idles. The speaker folds the net of her shadow and holds it as evidence. Here salt is not a passive landscape but an active medium of bodily permeability and witness.

In Chapter 19, “To Salt Lake, Letter Regarding Genealogy,” the speaker rises from “one break in the endless salt flat” and declares she has built for the city. She becomes a quarry, steals sandstone and quartz, and is born in uniform with a pickax in her throat. The salt flat is an origin point from which the speaker claims labor and belonging, reinterpreting Mormon pioneer history through a Black female genealogy.

A jarring shift occurs in Chapter 40, “Dishwashing the Mammy Salt & Pepper Shakers by Accident.” The shakers are described with their stereotyped features—black faces, housecoats, red mouths, white eyes. The speaker breaks them while washing, and the pieces go “into forgetting.” Here salt is no longer a natural element but a racist household object. The act of breaking is a quiet, accidental resistance, and the forgetting becomes a conscious release.

Salt also appears indirectly in later poems. In “Emancipation Queen” (Chapter 17), the robin’s egg does not contain salt, but the imagery of the eggshell echoes the crust of the salt flat. In “As Cain” (Chapter 18), the speaker gardens and bleeds into cursed earth, but salt itself is absent. These echoes reinforce the pervasiveness of the Great Salt Lake landscape even when not named.

Shifting Meanings of Salt

From Natural Wonder to Alien Transformation

The epigraph presents the Great Salt Lake as a picturesque sight. In “Salt,” that same lake becomes a red wound. The speaker does not admire it from a distance; she enters it, consumes its dormant life, and emerges altered. She becomes “two times the dark.” The salt flat is a place where identity is shed and remade. The epigraphs by Brigham Young (“This is the place!”) and Sun Ra (“Space is the place.”) frame the poem between settler territorial claim and Afrofuturist cosmic liberation. Salt becomes the boundary where history and imagination meet.

From Witness to Reclamation

In “Salt,” the speaker acts as a witness. She folds her shadow as evidence, documenting her presence on the flats and the lake’s alien ecology. In “To Salt Lake,” she moves from witness to builder. She steals sandstone and quartz, becomes the “Guard-thing of the White city,” and claims that she has constructed the city alongside its Mormon pioneers. The salt flat is not just a place she observes; it is the foundation from which she asserts her family’s labor and faith. This shift mirrors the arc of Afropioneerism—from being an outsider in the landscape to reclaiming it as home.

From Cosmic to Domestic

The salt flats in “Salt” connect to Sun Ra’s cosmic vision, making salt a material of liberation and transformation. In Chapter 40, salt is reduced to a twin set of shakers that embody a degrading racial stereotype. The difference in scale is enormous: from an entire lake to a pair of small porcelain figurines. Yet both carry weight. The shakers go “into forgetting,” suggesting that some histories are too painful to keep, while the salt flats hold evidence that the speaker preserves. Salt thus exists on a spectrum between monumental record and throwaway object.

Salt as Forgetting

The broken shakers disappear into forgetting, while the speaker in “Salt” holds her shadow as evidence. This contradiction—one salt figure discarded, another preserved—illustrates the tension in Golden Ax between remembering and letting go. The shakers represent a degrading past that the speaker may choose to discard, while the salt flat represents a history of Black presence that must be documented. Salt can be both archive and erasure.

Connections to Characters and Themes

The Speaker (Rio Cortez’s Persona)

The speaker is the primary navigator of salt throughout the collection. In “Salt,” she uses her body to interact with the lake, becoming permeable and transformed. In “To Salt Lake,” she speaks in first person as a laborer who built the city. The salt flat is the stage for her assertion of presence. For a deeper look at the speaker across the book, see the character page for Rio Cortez’s persona.

Ancestors

The speaker’s family history is interwoven with salt. The Author’s Note explains that her ancestors were Afropioneers who migrated to Utah after Reconstruction. Paul C. Howell became the first Black police detective in Utah, and his son Abner Howell was an early Black Mormon convert. Byrdie Lee Howell Langon self-published Utah and the Early Black Settlers, a work that documents the community that made a home near the Great Salt Lake. In Chapter 3, “Far Enough,” her pastor praises Byrdie for drawing out “all the beautiful things that many have not looked far enough to find.” This act of looking deeply echoes the speaker’s reaching into the red lake to pull out bones. The salt flat becomes a site for Byrdie’s legacy of visibility. Visit the character page for Byrdie Lee Howell Langon and Paul C. Howell for more.

Themes

• Afropioneerism: The salt flats are the literal ground of the Afrofrontier. The speaker claims the lake as a place of transformation and labor, redefining pioneer history from a Black perspective. See the Afropioneerism theme page.
• Identity and Duality: The speaker becomes “two times the dark” on the salt flat. Salt enables a doubling of self, a shedding and remaking. For more, see Identity and Duality.
• Memory and Ancestry: The dormant brine shrimp eggs and the bones pulled from the lake are metaphors for ancestral memory waiting to be revived. The salt flat holds time in suspended animation. See Memory and Ancestry.
• Ecological Grief and Nature: The lake is “dead” and idle, yet it supports alien life like artemia. The speaker’s consumption of eggs suggests a mourning for a landscape that is both toxic and vital. See Ecological Grief and Nature.
• Motherhood and Fear: Though less direct, the crow-headed goddess mother in “To Salt Lake” calls the speaker “dust,” linking salt to origin and mortality. The speaker’s birth on swamp property frames salt as a foundation of maternal labor. See Motherhood and Fear.

Study Questions with Answers

1. How does the salt flat function as a site of bodily transformation in Chapter 16, “Salt”?
   The speaker sheds her body like a “silksac” and walks onto the flats bare to the elements. She reaches into the red lake as if into a wound and pulls out bones, then crushes brine shrimp skeletons and eats their dormant eggs. These acts dissolve the boundary between her body and the landscape. She emerges as “two times the dark,” suggesting a doubling of identity—both her original self and a new self born from the salt. The salt flat becomes a medium for metamorphosis and a witness to her becoming.

2. What is the relationship between the two epigraphs in “Salt”—Brigham Young’s “This is the place!” and Sun Ra’s “Space is the place.”?
   The epigraphs create a tension between two claims on the same land. Brigham Young’s declaration is a historical assertion of Mormon settlement, linking the Great Salt Lake to a promised land. Sun Ra’s phrase recontextualizes the lake as a cosmic, Afrofuturist location—space, not territory. Together they frame the poem as a negotiation between earthly pioneer history and imaginative liberation. The speaker’s transformation on the salt flat navigates both poles, claiming the lake as a place of both rootedness and flight.

3. How does the meaning of salt in Chapter 40, “Dishwashing the Mammy Salt & Pepper Shakers by Accident,” contrast with the salt in Chapter 16?
   In “Salt,” salt is a vast natural element that enables transformation and witness. The speaker consumes its life and holds her shadow as evidence. In Chapter 40, salt is contained in a pair of figurines that embody a degrading racial stereotype. The shakers are broken accidentally and go “into forgetting,” suggesting a desire to discard racist artifacts. The difference is between salt as an archive of presence (the lake holds evidence) and salt as an object of oppression (the shakers are broken to erase a painful past). Both involve salt, but one preserves memory, the other releases it.

4. Why does the speaker fold her shadow as “evidence” in “Salt”?
   The shadow represents her physical presence on the salt flat. By folding it, she makes it portable—she can carry proof of her witness. The act suggests documentation and reclamation: she is recording her own existence in a landscape where Black bodies have often been erased. The word “evidence” implies that her presence on the salt flat is something that needs to be proven or preserved, especially in a state whose pioneer narrative has historically excluded Black settlers. The folded shadow becomes a counter-archive, a personal record of Afropioneer survival.