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---
title: Ronald McDonald
id: ronaldmcdonald
genre: verse
project:
title: Elegies for alternate selves
class: 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
|
