[FICTION/POETRY][12/15/25]Glassanne’s Canonization
Two Poems and a Story
by Miller Ganovsky
Glassanne’s Canonization
He was to become the first twenty-first century saint, though, in secret, I didn’t know that he was still eligible, still a candidate. I didn’t know if saints had to be virgins and I heard he had slept with a girl in the sophomore class. At the ceremony, she came and sang a song she had written for him:
Butterfly-wing-shaped puddle in the gravel driveway after a storm
Laid down in the middle, little angel was born
I think the congregation was a little confused throughout the program- it wasn’t exactly a celebration nor was it quite a funeral.
He drowned in the bog by the church. There were accounts of him getting dragged in by an alligator. Everyone who witnessed it gave a nearly identical statement. The gator stepped through the water’s surface like walking through a door, so casually, and in an instant, like it had been rehearsed, like it was nothing, opened its mouth and slammed it shut on Endy’s head, who had been napping in the grass after Sunday School. Whether it was the impact of the bite that killed him in a heartbeat or on account of the fact that his screaming was directed inward down the throat of the alligator, and maybe reverberated throughout its body, I heard that the encounter, and Endy’s death, was nearly silent, save for the slight splash the two of them made on their way back into the water. The coroner’s office did their best to stitch him back together.
As Bianca entered the second chorus of her song, her little sister, Glassanne, from where she sat in the pew, looked around and let out a big yawn. Taking advantage of the grand distraction, the attention her older sister was able to garner from the mourning town, she got up, walked down the aisle, and left the church. After Bianca had finished, their parents looked around for Glassanne, but she was nowhere to be found. Bianca watched them run out of the chapel as she descended from the stage. She could hear her father scream for Glassanne, to no avail:
Baby! Baby!
She was gone.
Ruffled by the disruption, all but Saint Endy’s family got up from their seats, set down their paper fans, flocked out into the August sun and spread like wildfire to find Glassanne. There are many accounts from witnesses who watched her leave the chapel that day, but none who saw where she went. Some say it was the same gator that got Endy. Bianca never forgave herself. She blamed her sister’s disappearance and more than likely death on having slept with Endy. She imagined them both plotting against her in the alligator’s stomach at the bottom of the bog. Some now are petitioning for the canonization of Saint Glassanne.
PRIVACY
In Wisconsin, a stranger in the night in a car
drove up the paved way in the dark and sat
outside my boyfriends mothers rental home
see she said in the day, showing us the video
taken from the porch camera he’s been coming
recently not doing anything but staying there
before the sun rises he reverses and leaves
we watch the headlights turn on me and my boyfriend
look at each other then out of the window
at nothing but morning grass and I suppose
the strangers imprint or ghost but what
does he want my boyfriend says we were asleep
inside together, one dog, two cats and his mother
its possible he wants nothing but somewhere private
some people have nowhere to go nothing to want
his mother says feeding everything inside unlocking
the door, the windows, putting the dog in the yard
he wants our privacy, I think of the house
in nothing in the night, of desires strength and skin
oil, fur, panes of glass away from him
Pornstar
Lucky pennies, bullets, berries in my pocket
all in a hope, for bared teeth
through them your voice
is a duffel, so packed with things
you’ll use without me
in the bed, carpet humid
with June
quietly to his ear
I think I don’t mean to be good
looking for you is a kind fog
an afternoon nap sunk into the moon-
light’s periphery
temple sweat
in the bed, carpet humid
with June
quietly to his ear
I’m a million through the screen-
door, juice. Pounds of meat quickly
all to get to you, couldn’t quickly
enough open. I’m held down
heavy with metal, painted porcelain
in melted ice
reflection I love
in the bed, carpet humid
with June
quietly to his ear
in melted ice
reflection I lost
warm wet
a full summer’s pond in the night sky
an impossible maximum for bared stars
MILLER GANOVSKY is a fiction writer and poet. His most recent work can be found in BRUISER and in Notch Magazine. In 2023, he received a fellowship with Brooklyn Poets, after which he was hired on as an intern. He is currently completing a collection of poetry and a collection of short fiction.