{"id":95,"date":"2026-04-07T21:17:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/?page_id=95"},"modified":"2026-04-13T02:50:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:50:37","slug":"to-die-for","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/poetry\/to-die-for\/","title":{"rendered":"To Die For"},"content":{"rendered":"

James B. Nicola<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall precisely what they did<\/span><\/p>\n

to make me feel unwelcome suddenly<\/span><\/p>\n

but do recall the moment when they changed<\/span><\/p>\n

and the few things I said they didn\u2019t know<\/span><\/p>\n

before. The tiny mom-and-pop restaurant<\/span><\/p>\n

had only two or three tables. The guy<\/span><\/p>\n

who owned the motel where I was staying<\/span><\/p>\n

told me their fried chicken was to die for,<\/span><\/p>\n

just tell them he sent me. Late afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was the only customer. Beneath<\/span><\/p>\n

the picture window, a wide shelf with things<\/span><\/p>\n

to read. Old magazines, pamphlets, and two<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibles. No, three. The restaurant was like<\/span><\/p>\n

a porch-extension or greenhouse converted.<\/span><\/p>\n

You saw into their television room.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, designed so mom and dad<\/span><\/p>\n

could go back and forth, home to work to home.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, very homey eaterie. We got<\/span><\/p>\n

to chatting about religion. Their three<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibles suggested they\u2019d be quite aware<\/span><\/p>\n

of rankling contradictions in the texts.<\/span><\/p>\n

John-Paul II had long since attended shul<\/span><\/p>\n

to honor Jews, \u201cthe elders of our Church,\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

he said. I made no bones about the Church<\/span><\/p>\n

arising out of Judaism since,<\/span><\/p>\n

after all, Jesus was a Jew. They had<\/span><\/p>\n

not heard this fact before, while at the age<\/span><\/p>\n

of five and six I started learning stuff<\/span><\/p>\n

like this in Catechism: the Messiah<\/span><\/p>\n

being of course a Jewish prophecy<\/span><\/p>\n

(which I found out at my first Alleluia<\/span><\/p>\n

Chorus sing-along, the finale<\/span><\/p>\n

of Handel’s oratorio Messiah).<\/span><\/p>\n

Passover week’s the same in both faiths, so<\/span><\/p>\n

[more]<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[\u201cTo Die,\u201d 2\/2, stanza continues]<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Last Supper, a Thursday, was a Seder.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interesting stuff, if interested.<\/span><\/p>\n

I shared these tidbits I had learned about<\/span><\/p>\n

the circumstances of a couple thousand<\/span><\/p>\n

years back with a sense of joy, the joy<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel whenever I learn something new,<\/span><\/p>\n

especially about the Old and New<\/span><\/p>\n

Testaments, the Apocrypha, the Dead<\/span><\/p>\n

Sea Scrolls, at last translated and on-line<\/span><\/p>\n

for all to read. Then like a lion\u2019s jaw<\/span><\/p>\n

opening suddenly, for the first time<\/span><\/p>\n

in my life I feared for my life, said thanks,<\/span><\/p>\n

and beat a hasty retreat outathere,<\/span><\/p>\n

losing the whole meal in the parking lot<\/span><\/p>\n

before I reached my car. Though this detail<\/span><\/p>\n

might be a piece of fiction for effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetic license. But it might not be.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James B. Nicola   I don\u2019t recall precisely what they did to make me feel unwelcome suddenly but do recall the moment when they changed and the few things I said they didn\u2019t know before. The tiny mom-and-pop restaurant had only two or three tables. The guy who owned the motel where I was staying… <\/p>\n

Read more To Die For<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"parent":21,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-95","page","type-page","status-publish","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/95\/revisions\/99"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}