Grant Burkhardt is a poet and writer whose work has been featured in The Martello Journal, the Great Lakes Review, Nightingale & Sparrow, Icarus, and others. He was a managing editor of The Wild Umbrella journal, and earned his M.Phil. in creative writing from Trinity College Dublin. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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The Middle (2015) was a little audio journey through my mid-20s, talking to other creative people who'd done big things with their lives, professionally and personally. 

Podcast

The lemon-scented soap in your bathroom. The
lemon-flavored tea in your kitchen. Always a biography, a
fiction, a romance on your nightstand. In the middle of your
street, a run and jump. A drunken kiss. Dropping a mixed
CD into the open arms of the 

Lingering Memories of Love

Without.

apart  until  amidst  toward
against  like  on  along
around  in  beneath
between  behind

With.

for  beside  except  regarding 
past  as  concerning  of
until  after  through
despite  beyond

Within.

Prepositions

A palmful of parsley, sprinkled. Hollandaise. 
Grilled halloumi. Eggs, two, poached. Garlic 
roasted baby spuds. A bed of blanched

Breakfast

In school we learned drunk drivers survive in droves
because they overcome human instinct, which is to say

they’re not alive enough to know:
when impact is imminent, brace.

Bounce

is that you become an easy target for gifts. 
Steamer pot, dutch oven, bamboo sticks,
zesters. Even perishables are fair game,
chiefly when coupled with the hardware.

The thing about people knowing you cook

Half of Walsh’s Pub is here for the band,
the other half are drowning out the music,
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
that works just enough.

Four men, tucked in the back corner table,
young but their beards age them years

In Walsh's Pub

The questions at the start of the nightmare came packaged with charms. 
As fresh lovers do, we laid naked and asked about each other:
our lives before, all interests galore, families, friends, cities,
books, beliefs, musics, the stuff that makes us

Grant Burkhardt

Selected work

Projects