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<h1 class="title">Ronald McDonald</h1>
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<p><span class="line">When Ronald McDonald takes off his <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">striped shirt</a>,</span><span class="line">his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks</span><span class="line">like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women</span></p>
<p><span class="line">in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery,</span><span class="line">is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick</span><span class="line">a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,</span></p>
<p><span class="line">is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries</span><span class="line">he gets for his fifty percent off? I’d like to think</span><span class="line">that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him</span></p>
<p><span class="line">in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.</span><span class="line">I’d like to believe that we are able to slough off selves</span><span class="line">like old skin and still retain some base self.</span></p>
<p><span class="line">Of course we all know this is not what happens.</span><span class="line">The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who</span><span class="line">the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.</span></p>
<p><span class="line">He is the same that hugs his children at night,</span><span class="line">who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they’re</span><span class="line">not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding</span></p>
<p><span class="line">a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot</span><span class="line">take off the facepaint or the <a href="roughgloves.html">yellow gloves</a>. They are</span><span class="line">stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar</span></p>
<p><span class="line">of his everyday associations. His plight is that</span><span class="line">of everyone’s—we are what we do who we are.</span></p>
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