The Scorpion in Golden Ax: Desire, Karma, and Cutting the Throat

What Is the Scorpion?

In Rio Cortez's Golden Ax, the scorpion appears as a concrete, recurring image within the poem "North Node" (chapter 6). There, the speaker describes a pre‑birth vision and a karmic journey: "I'm here to learn a lesson. ... I'm here to cut the scorpion from my throat." The scorpion literally is a living creature that clings to the speaker's throat, wrapping its eight legs around the speaker and fixing its many eyes on them. It is not a metaphor alone; it acts as a tangible presence that the speaker must physically remove.

Where the Scorpion Recurs

The scorpion is named explicitly only in "North Node," but its symbolic work echoes across later poems. In "I learn to shoot a bow" (chapter 12), the speaker takes up a bow and arrow, a tool that can cut or sever. The bow is carved by the speaker's grandfather and aimed at cardboard flats. The act of shooting recalls the need to cut the scorpion away—the bow becomes an instrument to remove what clings. In "Bellum" (chapter 43), the speaker asks, "If I take up the bow / What should we kill," directly linking weaponry to the removal of something threatening. The scorpion's presence is also felt in "As Cain" (chapter 18), where the speaker reflects on a mark from God and a restless wandering. The scorpion, like Cain's mark, can be read as a burden or sign that must be carried or cut away. Finally, in "Like a Suggestion" (chapter 7), the breakdown of natural boundaries (antelope dying on Antelope Island, wolves hunting bison in spring) mirrors the internal disruption the scorpion represents—a clinging that blurs the line between pleasure and danger.

How the Meaning Shifts

The scorpion's meaning develops across the collection:

Initially, the scorpion is purely personal: it drags the speaker through "sweet darkness and time." Over the book, it becomes a figure for any attachment—to pleasure, to memory, to a past identity—that must be voluntarily relinquished. The shift is from an internal demon to a recognized part of the self that can be worked with.

Character Connections

The scorpion primarily attaches to the poet's persona (the speaker), who is a stand‑in for Cortez's autobiographical voice. In the Author's Note (chapter 2), Cortez explains her family's experience as Afropioneers in Utah, a history of migration and re‑invention. The scorpion can be tied to the tension between that past (enslavement in Louisiana, conversion to Mormonism, racial exclusion) and the speaker's present life of privilege and love. The speaker's ability to cut the scorpion away mirrors the larger Afropioneer project of cutting away historical trauma through imagination and claiming space.

The scorpion also touches the figure of the mother in "North Node." The mother loves the speaker and bears them underwater. The scorpion appears even "through the lilies"—lilies that also surround the blue bull in the speaker's vision. The mother's love does not remove the scorpion; the speaker must do it themselves. This connects to the theme of motherhood and fear, as the mother's act of love does not erase the speaker's struggles.

Other characters, such as Byrdie Lee Howell Langon (chapter 3) and Paul C. Howell (chapter 12), are part of the family line that the speaker inherits. The scorpion could represent the burden of that heritage—the joy and pain of being part of a lineage that was denied a beginning. In "Family Tree at Earth’s Surface" (chapter 48), the speaker reaches a "Nameless mother and her son" and then stops counting names. That moment of release from genealogical obsession is analogous to cutting the scorpion: letting go of the need to know every detail.

Theme Connections

The scorpion weaves through several major themes:

• Identity and Duality – The speaker has two birth stories (one from a sea god, one with no mother) and past lives in the Nevada desert. The scorpion embodies the pull of those other selves, creating a duality that must be integrated or severed. Visit the identity and duality theme page for more.

• Memory and Ancestry – The scorpion is a karmic remnant from past lives. Cutting it away is akin to processing ancestral memory without being consumed by it. The speaker's journey in "North Node" mirrors the genealogical search in "Family Tree at Earth’s Surface," where the need to record names is finally released. See memory and ancestry.

• Ecological Grief and Nature – In "Like a Suggestion," natural breakdown echoes the speaker's internal struggle. The scorpion is a natural creature, but its clinging is out of place inside a human throat. This suggests a rupture between the natural world and human desire. Explore the ecological grief theme.

• Afropioneerism – The scorpion can be read as the legacy of racial and religious trauma that the speaker must cut away to fully inhabit the present. The act of cutting is an act of Afropioneer agency—claiming the right to shape one's own story, as Cortez does in the Author's Note when she claims the term Afropioneer for her ancestors. Read more on the Afropioneerism page.

• Motherhood and Fear – The mother in "North Node" loves the speaker enough to bear them underwater, yet the scorpion persists. Motherhood cannot protect the child from their own desires. This tension is explored further on the motherhood and fear theme page.

Study Questions with Answers

1. What does the scorpion literally look like in "North Node," and what does it do to the speaker?
The scorpion has eight legs and many eyes. It wraps its legs around the speaker and sets its eyes on them, igniting "longing." Even in a loving, comfortable home, it clings to the speaker's throat. The speaker must cut it away as a lesson.

2. How does the scorpion relate to the speaker's past lives in the Nevada desert?
In those past lives, the speaker "only did what felt good" – lying naked on hot sand, watching horses, pressing a chest against an idle car. The scorpion embodies that devotion to pure pleasure. The current life is an opportunity to learn self‑mastery by severing that attachment.

3. Why does the mother in "North Node" give birth underwater, and does her love remove the scorpion?
The mother loves the speaker so deeply that she bears them underwater, a mystical, amniotic birth. Her love does not remove the scorpion; the speaker still feels it "through the lilies." The poem suggests that no external love can erase an individual's karmic struggle—the speaker must act for themselves.

4. In what later poems does the action of cutting or shooting echo the need to cut the scorpion?
In "I learn to shoot a bow," the speaker takes up a bow carved by their grandfather and practices shooting. In "Bellum," they ask "What should we kill" with the bow. These poems reflect the ongoing need to sever the scorpion, turning the internal struggle into a deliberate, learned skill.

Conclusion

The scorpion in Golden Ax is more than a recurring image; it is a dynamic symbol that captures the tension between desire, inheritance, and transformation. From its vivid appearance in "North Node" to its subtle resonance in poems about archery and ecological disruption, the scorpion insists that cutting away what clings is both a personal and a communal act. For the speaker, and for Cortez's larger Afropioneer vision, that act is essential to learning the lesson of the present and imagining a free future.