Happy Halloween, people. After racing home from work to get Halloween candy in time for all the tykes in my neighborhood, and buying a metric ton of those bite-sized candy bars, we’ve had one trick-or-treater. What the junk, kids? Get on the stick and ring my doorbell with your super-scary plastic Hulk costumes. Take this candy off my hands. I don’t really want it!

Today’s the last day of the month, and in about an hour and a half, I will have written a new poem for 31 straight days. Gluttons for punishment that we are, Matthew Olzmann and I will be continuing the experiment with slightly relaxed rules, all through November. I don’t think the rest of our gang will join us– and I don’t blame them. October has been mentally taxing; I can’t think of many days when I didn’t have a little demon on my shoulder all day reminding me that no matter what I accomplished, the poem wasn’t yet done.

But the exercise has not been an empty one– I have a few drafts headed straight to the circular file and a few I’m excited to keep working on. The goal is to try to practice so much that I’m able to internalize the good stuff– so when I have a poem that needs writing, the craft will be deeply a part of what I’m doing.

So, November. 26 poems in 30 days. Yup… I get one day off each week.