Signature Editions

In his startling debut collection, Darrell Epp brings us a city haunted by monsters and movie stars, where hope and rage, sacred and carnal, mundane and surreal are uneasy neighbours. A city whose downtown swells with pleasures and pains too big for words, and where every dead end is suffused with an unbidden kindness, ‘an accidental choreography.’

Epp's Imaginary Maps is as funny as it is sad, as entertaining as it is insightful. Terse or lyrical, his lines are always fresh, always surprising. Behind the jokes, behind the jilted lovers, werewolves, and dead celebrities lurks a deadly serious project: slowing down time in a culture obsessed with speeding it up. Savouring the precious, temporary/eternal moments, Epp reminds us that not paying attention may be the biggest crime of all.

How Many Molecules

…the insomniac is
counting molecules,
digesting a burrito
with difficulty. 
what’s your infinity
multiplied by my zero?
existential is a word you
might use for tonight. the
sizzling bacon, the hum of 
nocturnal motors, the 
mind too big for its brain.
tragedies hibernate inside
moments like these: the 
bloody wedding dress,
the mushroom clouds,
pianos thrown off the
balcony. what to
say, and to whom.

This Absence

trees with leaves like tin foil, 
the ache of yesterday’s 
pleasures remembered,
plus all the rest of it tied 
up in a boy scout knot.
clear skies and days that
end with a ‘y’ so far away,
life is harder than it looks. 
this absence will outlive
me, nothing ever ends.

My Play

o how i wish my work was my 
play. square pegs could fit into 
round holes, the chicken could 
trade places with the egg.
boots on my head, hats on my
feet, the evil queen becomes 
the slave girl birthing new 
stars inside the eagle nebula.
if i could show you exactly
how gorgeous you are as 
you stagger sleepily out of 
the bedroom and ask what’s
for breakfast, nothing would 
ever get done around here.