McDonald’s doesn’t clean their ice machines

By Jong Yun Won

Norah Jones won’t stop singing ‘Don’t Know Why’
into my headphones.
Must mean I’m in love with you. Is it a good thing
summer drink days are only seasonal?
There should also be a winter drink days. Spring smoothie days.
Fall Mcdonalattes.

Romance is just a way to refill our lives:
I bet we would sit underneath the moonlight
of a factory farm. You could eventually learn
to hate the smiley faces
I painfully carve into every chicken nugget.

Unless, Netflix makes another rom-com on the guy
who’s travelling to every McDonald’s in the world.
He meets a vegan heckler, but she likes guys with odd ambitions
and they both are nice or something, probably
somewhere foreign, like Korea, but off the coast

deciding to share a Korean big-mac and Vegan shake,
and they’ll scream “Don’t Know Why” into the water.
Here I am, doing the silly thing again. You would know if you knew the song.
It’s counter-productive to visit each McDonald’s

and not because the perfect one
stands right there.


Jong Yun Won (he/him) is a Korean-Canadian living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. He studied creative writing and English at the University of British Columbia. His work has been published in The Pointed Circle. He has recently bought a new pair of basketball shoes.

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