"A groundbreaking collection of poetry from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio Cortez. From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience, a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures. In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors-some of the first Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after reconstruction-Golden Ax invites readers to tore-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom"-- Provided by publisher.

SPACE BETWEEN MOUNTAINS.Far Enough -- Covered Wagon as Spaceship -- UFO, for Instance -- North Node -- Like a Suggestion -- I Have Learned to Define a Field as a Space between Mountains -- The Idea of Ancestry -- Driving at Night -- I'm Forced to Imagine There Are Two of Me Here -- I learn to shoot a bow -- Partum -- Marion's 1982 Chevrolet Citation -- A Class Distinction -- Salt -- Emancipation Queen -- As Cain -- To Salt Lake, Letter Regarding Genealogy -- THE NEGRO PIONEER. Self-Portrait in a Tanning Bed -- Black Annie Hall -- An Ancestor Maybe -- Black Mary Wilkie -- Double Threat -- Forgetting Is to Heal -- It's Like That Scene in Annie Hall Where Annie Leaves Her Body -- Black Fragments -- Ritual of Witness -- Maternal Instinct -- Conduction -- Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film -- What Begets What Begets -- FRONTIER ELSEWHERE. The Creature Describes Her Own Hands -- Questions of the Last Relative Slave -- Ecriture Feminine -- Black Frasier Crane -- The End of Eating Everything -- Frasier Crane Toasts No One in Particular -- My Beloved Finds Me Everywhere but Here -- Dishwashing the Mammy Salt & Pepper Shakers by Accident -- On Injury -- Bayuk -- Bellum -- Pre-Earth and Post-Earth Life -- Ars Poetica with Mother and Dogs -- Fear of Motherhood -- Visiting Whitney Plantation -- Family Tree at Earth's Surface -- Eden.