Vox Populi
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Jim Daniels: Ghost Guns
beside the grazing lambs
the wolves already stand, eyes fixed and starry
— Ingeborg Bachmann
.
Everyone’s so spiked with rage
they’re shoving God out of the way.
Sit this one out, Jesus, they’re saying—
this one isn’t going in the next Bible.
Plush Jesus dolls scattered
on the picked-over discount table
at the dollar store, headed
for the dumpster. Nobody
even winking at Jesus on their way
past, like they used to. Me, I’ve never
been a fan, but I feel sorry for him now
yanking on his long tangled inaccurate hair,
not getting his cut of the cash
as the guns pile up into Babel towers.
~~~~
Jim Daniels’s many collections of poetry include Gun/Shy (Wayne State, 2021) and Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon University, 2024). He was born and grew up in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, the writer Kristin Kovacic.
Copyright 2024 Jim Daniels
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I can only look on and hope that the gun desease doesn’t come to any country in which I reside. So much said in so few, but the right words.
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I find the image of the discount Jesus dolls on the bargain table absurd and movie.
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Jesus replaced by guns. Just this week I was given a welcome email from something called guns.com I’d never joined, (did someone sign me up as a joke?) so deleted it from any future with me. Ghost guns, not really present in their totality, just in their impact. And ghost Marys and Jesuses in their various nationalist garb, festooned with nostalgia, but not much reality. Religious ghost guns? But those are deadly.
Somehow I’m reminded of a couple lines from an old Robert Bly poem: Counting Small-Boned Bodies: If only we could make the bodies smaller,/ the size of skulls. Jesus as a no-boned ghost body, the shrinking size of our hopes?
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Of the many problems facing our nation, the easy availability of guns is near the top of the list.
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Another brilliant aspect of a poem like this one by Jim Daniels, is its inspirational potency. Of the numerous readers of Vox Populi who don’t respond directly in the comment section, many may now be busy writing something of their own, as great art like Ghost Guns inspires their artistic endeavors. Trying times unleash local creativity all over the globe, and this poem helps build its seedbed.
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Thanks, Jim. I agree. Out of trying times comes great art.
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Gut punched.
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me too
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Wow! What a poem!
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Jim is amazing, isn’t he? He can do so much in a short poem.
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