Review: David Wasserman's "In My Closet I Have a Collection of Fingers"

​by Jake McAuliffe.

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You’ve probably noticed my gloves. They catch my falling fingers.

In this piece, Wasserman creates intimacy, fear, and horror with ease, sweeping the reader into direct dialogue with the character—this poor, poor person who is losing their fingers. I love weird stories and this is absolutely weird, but beautiful too. We feel the depths of empathy through these moments of desperation and pleas directed at the reader.

I’m worried there will soon be too much of me and I can’t stop the
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falling /

Wasserman tells so much about character in passages with flashing, changing imagery. It reads like montage or a quick-edit reel. In them, we are shown vulnerabilities and desires, but the effect is larger—spinning this story of few words into a lifetime of finger-losing tragedy. The reader is given a taste of the bigger picture and this, in my opinion, is why the emotion of the piece is so strong.

the need to gently run my fingers down the side of someone’s face / to hold a naked hand just once / to fingertip lick the wind

We are left without knowing what becomes of this person. But in short work, Wasserman makes us wonder. It’s a heartfelt, wonderful piece that will leave me suspicious of glove-wearers for a long time.
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read wasserman's piece in issue 1