<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- AUTOCENTO OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE --> <!-- vim: fdm=indent --> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="pandoc"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes"> <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth"> <title>Ronald McDonald | Autocento of the breakfast table</title> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="img/favico.png" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/common.css"> <script src="./js/lozenge.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="./js/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/verse.css"> <script src="./js/verse.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/elegies.css"> <script src="./js/elegies.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> <![endif]--> <!-- <script src="js/external.js"> </script> --> </head> <body> <article id="container"> <header> <!-- title --> <h1 class="title">Ronald McDonald</h1> <div class="header-extra"> </div> </header> <section class="content verse"><p>When Ronald McDonald takes off his <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">striped shirt</a>,<br />his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks<br />like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women</p> <p>in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery,<br />is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick<br />a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,</p> <p>is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries<br />he gets for his fifty percent off? I’d like to think<br />that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him</p> <p>in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.<br />I’d like to believe that we are able to slough off selves<br />like old skin and still retain some base self.</p> <p>Of course we all know this is not what happens.<br />The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who<br />the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.</p> <p>He is the same that hugs his children at night,<br />who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they’re<br />not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding</p> <p>a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot<br />take off the facepaint or the <a href="roughgloves.html">yellow gloves</a>. They are<br />stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar</p> <p>of his everyday associations. His plight is that<br />of everyone’s—we are what we do who we are.</p></section> </article> <nav> <a class="prevlink" href="roughgloves.html" title="Previous article in Elegies for alternate selves"> Rough gloves </a> <a href="#" id="lozenge" title="Random page"> ◊ </a> <a class="nextlink" href="moongone.html" title="Next article in Elegies for alternate selves"> The moon is gone and in its place a mirror </a> </nav> </body> </html>