12.22.2025

DINNER PARTY

Photo: Tabitha Turner

Nobody knew what to say
     about it (the ones who knew about it).

Platters passed hand to hand—figs, manchego,
     jamón. An oaked Chardonnay

rose and spoke—laughter left everyone hoarse.
     A subterranean river changed course.

---

SOURCE
X. P. Callahan, “Dinner Party,” in Black Shirt Emblazoned, 1st ed. (Monday Editions, 2024; out of print).

NOTE
Today is the last day of Hanukkah.

• On December 14, the eve of the first day of Hanukkah, a father and son in Australia shot sixteen people to death and wounded dozens more in an attack targeting members of Sydney’s Jewish community. The dead include two rabbis and a woman who survived the Holocaust as a child.

• Only six months ago, a man in Boulder, Colorado, firebombed a group of Jews and allies who had gathered at the city’s Pearl Street Mall to rally for the release of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and its civilian accomplices. More than a dozen people suffered serious burns; an 82-year-old woman died of her injuries.

• Less than two weeks before that, another man flew from Chicago to Washington, DC, and fired twenty-one rounds into the backs of two young Israeli Embassy staffers outside a reception at the Capital Jewish Museum. He told police he had taken inspiration from a “martyr” who died after setting himself on fire outside the embassy in 2024.

These are just three of five high-profile fatal attacks against Jews across the English-speaking world in 2025. This year also saw thousands of threats, personal assaults, and instances of vandalism against synagogues and other Jewish community buildings.

Today’s poem ends the sequence of five I’ve been posting here for the duration of Hanukkah; find the others here, here, here, and here. The poems are from Black Shirt Emblazoned, a chapbook that reflects on the worldwide explosion of Jew-hatred that followed the Hamas-led pogrom of 7 October 2023 in southern Israel.

The first edition is out of print. DM me if you want to preorder a signed copy of the second edition ($16, postage included within the continental US). As with the first edition, all proceeds from the second edition benefit ZAKA Search and Rescue.