Poetry Vault: Pony Express

At least my subconscious pays attention.

​By Zach Hively

When folks ask me what advice I have for writers, I often straight-up steal something I gleaned from Pam Houston on (I think) a radio interview: Notice the glimmers—the things that have been snagging your attention recently are doing so for a reason.

This poem comes, I think, from a corollary, which I’ll call the Glimmer Archives: the things that caught my attention once upon a time, which I suddenly remember for no good reason, except that there is always a reason.

This entry from the Glimmer Archives was a pretty convincing memory that a bridge in Paris had collapsed because too many lovers had fastened too many locks onto it, presumably without leaving the keys. 

 quick Google search turned up that my memory was (for once) not overly faulty; the bridge didn’t collapse, but it did lose a rail (or part of a “parapet,” which sounds like something that belongs on a French bridge).

What a beautifully evocative idea to have filed away in the recesses of the Archives. A Parisian bridge, overwhelmed by love locks.
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Welp, a decade after I must have heard some version of that news brief, the notion found its home—in a short poem, unpublished (so far) in book form, titled (so far) “Pony Express.”