Dickinson's poems center on very vivid images, with very different takes on them. They very often contain abstract concepts, which are often given concrete principles and are incorporated as part of her images. She implants deeper meanings behind her images, and tends to rely on a different technique than the Imagists. The majority of her work relies heavily on a different type of imagery symbolism.
One of the poems where this symbolism is most evident is "My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun." This poem is obviously based around a strong metaphoric image, as Dickinson is comparing herself to a gun belonging to someone else. In the poem, she uses the gun as a symbol to show her role in the patriarchal society she lived in. The first stanza shows this feeling:
My Life had stood a Loaded Gun
In Corners till a Day
The Owner passed identified
And carried me away
In this stanza, Dickinson never explicitly mentions the owner to be a man, but as women didn't use guns in those times, it is understood that the owner would be male, which she does clarify later in the poem. Even without an outright declaration of male ownership, these lines imply the role that women were supposed to take in Dickinson's time, sitting silently in the background until a man wishes to take them away.
In the last stanza of the poem, Dickinson echoes the same theme of needing a man to access her power.
Though I than He may longer live
He longer must than I
For I have...