Madonna
The next time you see a person
Their hair will always be different
Longer or shorter
Like someone stepping
On or off a stepladder
Ultimately everything
Is some degree of misunderstanding
Time going forward
But also reaching back
My childhood piano teacher
Telling me I “looked like a madonna”
I guess I had a huge face
Blank and pinchable
I thought she meant the singer, though
And I was so flattered
So touched
That I began to wear
Fingerless gloves
Luciana Arbus-Scandiffio is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Hopkins Review, Poetry Northwest, and Oxford Poetry. She has two lesbian moms and is originally from New Jersey.