Joanne Epp's poetry has appeared in several Canadian journals and one anthology. In early 2012 she served a four-month term as Writer-In-Residence at St. Margaret's Anglican Church in Winnipeg, which resulted in the release of her first chapbook, Crossings, in May 2012.


What's the worst that could happen?
(a response to the mixed-media works in the exhibit What are you scared of? by Bonnie Marin)

Boots in the night, knocks at the window.
Bird-flicker in the tongue. Heart-stop.
Lines crossed, tied strangle-tight.
The mind lost in a closed room
(the imagined dark so much thicker)
strobe light   image-stutter   shape-shift
red beast child's face twitch
pull away      step
backward      one,
two, and shut
the door.
Say nothing.
If you tell
it might come true.


So this is dystopia
(a response to the mixed-media works in the exhibit What are you scared of? by Bonnie Marin)

Dolls that won't play house,
a red dress that won't dance.
Boots that don't walk. Suspended
in that half-second gap between
one footfall and the next,
crenellated treads waiting
to make their stamp.
You don't hear anything except
the fading echo of the first boot
but the next one will come,
it'll come all right.
Could be brown or black
spit-shined steel-toed
full-grain leather uppers
rubber soles guaranteed
not to fall apart or fade.
Guaranteed
you'll keep hearing that infinite
hair's-breadth between disasters.
Never mind whose nightmare this was
in the first place.
It's yours now.