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Poem-a-day

Madonna Overview

Being a cult figure is the essence of being 
a paradox in which someone 
has managed to get themselves linked

to the theoretically real while 
simultaneously getting themselves tied 
to conventional assumptions about being

this close to being a deity. They may, 
in that cryptic state, serve as both 
an extra without lines and the sole reason

center stage was invented. A cult figure 
can’t die, clearly a plus. Likewise, 
they get to be objects, playthings

of intellectual exchange between like minds 
and antagonists. That said, these icons  
are never merely after-the-fact abstractions.

No. Although anyone can hope 
to have a dahlia named after them—
wrongly assuming that nature will then

be forced to remember their name—
that path ignores the fact that nature 
is yet another meaningless conceit

over which people gush and go on and on 
about. “Using one’s imagination” 
is a far better way of gaining possession

of a new reality. One simply denies 
reality in favor of believing 
whatever one wants reality to be. It is this

that makes it possible to turn a ‘special girl’ 
into a cult figure—one that can be either 
a virgin, or, you know, “like a virgin.”

Copyright © 2025 by Mary Jo Bang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 29, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang
Photo credit: Carly Ann Faye
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Khadijah Queen is the Guest Editor of July. Read or listen to a Q&A with Queen about her curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Minna (IX) Maxwell Bodenheim 12/12/2021
Paradox Georgia Douglas Johnson 12/11/2021
Trap Music David Tomas Martinez 12/10/2021
Meditation in the Open-Air Garage Carol Moldaw 12/09/2021
Big Clock Li-Young Lee 12/08/2021
from “The Trees Witness Everything” Victoria Chang 12/07/2021
Dancing, before you were born J. Hope Stein 12/06/2021
Appalling Heart Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven 12/05/2021
Winter with the Gulf Stream Gerard Manley Hopkins 12/04/2021
from “The Book of Absence” Alireza Roshan 12/03/2021

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