Mathias

Interview with My Father/ Dinner

I remember when I was you,

All the electricity

None of the outlets

 

I ask, does it make you feel powerful
He told me of boisterous bar brawl

battles where he’s had too many
Talked to the wrong mans woman
Made bets he couldn’t float
How he would throw whole men over tables
Break whole collarbones if need be

Yes son
It makes you feel powerful
Like you can do anything you set your appetite to do
And I got a mighty large appetite

Hes a large man.

Could drink my body weight

in anything Hennessey

I ask does it make you feel full

 

He told me he remembers whole meals

pushed in a small cup that didn’t smell like

grandmas meatloaf. It was too strong to savor
I don’t have room for anymore anything after this

 

Yes I’m full
No, I haven’t eaten solid food in days
I miss your mother’s mac and cheese
nowadays all she does is yell at me
She wont feed me
She keeps pouring my dinner down the kitchen sink
She cries when I smell like my dinner coming home
When I smell like dinner late at night
When I wake up early to get a start on dinner
When I miss work because dinner ran long  



I have dinner till I can’t hear her anymore
till i can’t see the judgment in her eyes no more
It’s just me and my supper now
No woman to tear me from…….To talk me down when

Lullaby me through these nightmares
I don’t need a warm body to feel complete no more

I asked does it make you whole
Whole person?

Whole man?

Whole father
He says

Why bother with these human things
I would have paid your college tuition

But I had this hunger for something

you can’t cook up in the kitchen

It gets expensive leveraging car payments

against  brown paper bag bounties
Sitting in a thunderbird
embracing your bottle like soulmate

Next to your wife like a punching bag
Your kids like a thousand bones that

grew out of you already
Your son screaming through tears

wishes you didn’t eat today

wishing you would starve
I remember when I was you
staring into the abyss of absolute after work

afraid of the monster in my hunger
The aftermath of facing the

whole glass and becoming my
dad afterwards

I’m afraid
all that dinner on the table all those bones
the god dang electricity
none of the outlets

Mathias has been on both teams that he’s slammed for with The Writers Block slam team in 2015 and The Writing Wrongs slam team in 2016. In addition to poetry Mathias has Hosted several events including “Italian Food and poetry Night” an annual event he co-created in Columbus Oh since 2013, “The Writer’s Block” poetry night twice, and serves as the official reserve MC for the Ness Open Mic Experience.  He is currently doing work with The Harmony Project as the sole poet on a full stage performance alongside the Columbus Arts Choir which will be housed at both the Lincoln Theater as well the Ohio theater.  

Faith and preservation of identity play a large role in Mathias’s work. He’s the middle child of a single parent household that was always the awkward nerd of the group. These concepts are weaved into his pieces and play a large part in his stage identity as well. The most import things to his art are God and family and how each play a pivotal role in keep the person grounded.