---
title: Ronald McDonald
genre: verse

project:
    title: Elegies for alternate selves
    css: elegies
    order: 17
    prev:
    - title: Rough gloves
      link: roughgloves
    next:
    - title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
      link: moongone
...

When Ronald McDonald takes off his [striped shirt][], \
his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \
like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women

in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \
is he no longer Ronald?  Is he no longer happy to kick \
a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,

is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \
he gets for his fifty percent off?  I'd like to think \
that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him

in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.  \
I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \
like old skin and still retain some base self.

Of course we all know this is not what happens.  \
The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \
the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.

He is the same that hugs his children at night, \
who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \
not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding

a basket of fries in front of a field.  He cannot \
take off the facepaint or the [yellow gloves][].  They are \
stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar

of his everyday associations.  His plight is that \
of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.

[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html