‘I’m coming for your guns’ by Jeanne Obbard

— Hannah Cohen

When you think about the physical act of taking something away, there is a sense of authority. A power dynamic. Someone or something is left with an absence. However, ‘I’m coming for your guns’ spins the old gun control rhetoric on its side and instead shows us “the whole world of things”. There is no war or divisiveness, just “an army of Etsy sellers … / Stevie Nicks singing ‘Wild Heart,’ / and lavender.” Beautiful objects and scenes are juxtaposed against the removal of this particular instrument of death—notably, the “lover you love to feel the missing of.” Loss, here, is changed into a positive rather than a negative.

In all poetic honesty, what is there left to say? Truly, Obbard has written a powerfully affecting poem that considers “the loss [those] will feel” about having their guns taken away but never apologizes for sensibility.


Glass: A Journal of Poetry