Pride goeth, they say, & I had been priding myself on writing the bulk of my 3:15s on time this year, sleeping through the alarm less (thanks in part to my bastard use of California time while on the East Coast), & now here it is nearly new year's & I'm only just typing these babies into the computer. Ah, what's a girl to do. You may notice that after the first two days, my 3:15s remained 3:15s, refusing to convert to noons & midnights. One of my favorite elements of the 3:15 month has been awaking into the poems, writing things of which I have absolutely no memory the next morning, waiting until September (loosely defined-does that make today, December 22, still September? If so, can I patent that?) to get a view into where my subconscious/conscious mind's eye has been. As it is, I'm never asleep at 3:15 every night for a month (in 1994-the year the notebook with my unread 3:15s was stolen out from under the pool table at a Mekons show at Gabe's in Austin on 18 August-I was only asleep 2 or 3 times at 3:15); writing at 3:15, however, there are many more nights when the alarm occasions the poem than when a glance at the clock does. Writing at noon & midnight I found myself guaranteed to do waking writing only-something I do all the time anyway, & for me this isn't (hasn't been) an "all the time anyway" kind of project. I felt concerned that the poems would slide towards incorporation into the various series I'm currently working on rather than being a completely distinct & distinctly odd series of their own-it felt more important to me to let them be their own 3:15 sort of thing than to be simultaneous with the rest of the group. I initially attempted to write at 3:15 a.m. & 3:15 p.m. so I'd at least be on a similar pendulum as the rest of y'all, but that failed as well-the rush of stopping in the middle of my afternoon (however Williamsesquely pleasurable) seemed more frustrating than my irritable little lines were worth. So here are my poems-uncut-which will (in their timing & concurrent tone) perhaps lend a sense of the history of the project: this is how I've written them for the past five years (except the one year I skipped-can't even remember why, now) & this is how the sixth (fifth) year wrote itself as well, by hand with a black pen in the entirety of a not-quite-8½ x 11 notebook with glittery silver stars & strangely wooden-looking white child-angels & "Twinkle Smile / when I'm with you I feel / like I'm in a dream" in glittery silver lettering on the front & on the verso side of each inside page (in baby blue, of course) "Having small wings and small hearts, these / angels give happiness to every one."