---
title: Ronald McDonald
genre: verse

id: ronaldmcdonald
toc: "Ronald McDonald"

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