Your Impossible Voice
May 8, 2023

Bess Recalls the Great Depression

By Kathryn Silver-Hajo

She paints WPA-inspired scenes of fishermen and farm hands, the frame shop on Flatbush a ruckus of wood and wire, tools and nails. Syd measures, hammers, curses. Bess regales with tales of bill collectors pounding the front door while they tiptoed out the back. Our Tom-and-Jerry routine, she sighs.

About the Author

Kathryn Silver-HajoKathryn Silver-Hajo is a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her stories appear or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, The Citron Review, CRAFT, Emerge Literary Journal, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary, and others. Kathryn’s flash collection Wolfsong and novel Roots of The Banyan Tree are forthcoming in 2023. She reads for Fractured Lit. More at: kathrynsilverhajo.com; twitter.com/KSilverHajo; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo

Related Flash
Happy birthday candles on cake

How to be Cool Like Frankie

By Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

“Doormen, delivery guys, and nannies call out to Frankie in Spanish when we walk over to the playground in Washington Square. Guapo is the one word I can always make out. Handsome. Grown-ups notice him.”

Read More
black upright piano next to a brown leather padded chair

My Father Singing

By Jeff Friedman

“Most evenings, my father sang in his chair in the living room, even though he often didn’t know the words to the songs he was singing. He’d hum the melody or sing nonsense syllables to replace the words.”

Read More
village houses with damaged roofs and uprooted trees

Twister

By Mikki Aronoff

“First a whoosh like a runaway locomotive. Silver minnows fell from the sky. Windows feathered, fell onto shifting sidewalks. Buildings tumbled, entombing the townspeople.”

Read More

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This