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trampset,
a literary journal
Three Stories About Romy I Promised Never to Repeat
by MB Valente...At recess that first day she told me to punch a boy she pointed out and I did. He hit me back and got in trouble but nobody yelled at me. I just crouched in her shadow and felt its warmth fall over me like a wing.
12 minutes ago6 min read
Marcie Safe and Sound
by Natalie Paris...For a long while, no one would notice her car in the ocean of cars, stretching out towards the horizon—north, south, east, and west—and that was just the way that Marcie would have wanted it. Her car could be anyone’s. No one would bother her.
12 minutes ago4 min read
What Remained Hungry
by Jack Fisher...everyone within smelling distance would remember what had floated past them.
Chickens. Mattresses. Gas cans. Family photos. A horse with one eye open. A young woman's wedding dress, moving in the current as though the bride were still inside it.
12 minutes ago4 min read
A Jar of Dirt
by Mitchell Ny...We lie on the switchback, you atop my chest, and become immovable—like my nerves had been pulled gently from my navel. I am denervated meat and cooked clay.
Jul 313 min read
In Praise of the Non-Linear
by Tyler Dempsey...If I cared about linear progress, I would’ve never gotten picked up by a plane hitchhiking.
Had I taken my friend’s offer to drive me from Anchorage to Denali in early-May of 2017, after arriving in the 49th State from a winter in Missoula, MT, I wouldn’t remember a single damn thing of that trip today.
Dec 5, 202512 min read
Wound
by Abhinav...That was the day childhood ended. Time no longer a yard but a funnel tilted downhill and revenge suddenly a possibility, not just desire. I knew I could do it. She saw it in my eyes. She knew I could do it.
Oct 31, 20254 min read
The Carwash Essay
by M.M. Kaufman...There is as likely a chance as not that under those giant wipe-o-matic’s you side-step into another reality. Maybe in this one you love yourself. At least in the reality that brought you here, you showed up for yourself. That’s a start.
Oct 30, 20257 min read
I told them the sky was falling
by Liz Berkstresser...When the floor
stops moving, they take us off the truck. There’s a trail
of blood leading to an open space with a green velvet floor.
12 minutes ago1 min read
Bags of Bags
by Zebulon Huset...There’s always a seed crystal ready to replicate itself. The mother-soup bags. It’s not like the bags of bags were precious, but I dreamed better when I knew they were safe.
12 minutes ago1 min read
ballet planet
by Julieanne Larick...if you think our legs are
green pears in a bowl
if you think there’s merit to
wearing a leotard in the dark
take us home tonight and
fistfeed us chex-mix by the bucketful
12 minutes ago2 min read
Macro Minds, Micro Talks with Mandira: Frances Ogamba
Interview by Mandira Pattnaik... "Reading can begin to feel easier and less risky, while, with each passing day, we grow more judgmental of our own work. I would say: take the risk. Begin afraid. What is the worst that could happen?"
Aug 67 min read
Olamide: The Argument for Being Nigeria’s King of Pop
by Paul Chuks...Any artist who stays back and refuses Western audience or does not collaborate with a Western star or is not affiliated with any Western label is seen as unambitious and a local champion. A defeatist mindset that is reflective of the sharp fangs of colonialism still burrowed in our psyche.
Aug 45 min read
Macro Minds, Micro Talks with Mandira: Writer and Poet Abhinav
Interview by Mandira Pattnaik...
"I like poems that feel like a fever dream, and I like poems that feel like a snapshot of eternity."
Jul 248 min read
Kate's Kite
by Paul Chuks...Kate’s eyes were blue as though they were molded from the sky and plugged straight into her eye sockets. The black and white spots were an added spirituality...She was black in the way the night did not mean to be.
Jun 264 min read
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