OSV News photo/Jose Luis Gonzalez, Reuters

No angel directed this Haitian Joseph here,
who looks too weary to respond,
even if one had. Mary, too, is distracted,
holding a feeding spoon, child on her lap.

The tall, brown-robed man stands over them.
It must be a blessing, so they lower their eyes.

Maybe he can get them an apartment.

Jesus seems the only cheerful one—
trying, with infant interest and intent,
to seize the Cardinal’s big cross.

Susan Donnelly’s newest poetry collection is The Maureen Papers and Other Poems. Its title poem sequence was 2019 co-winner of the Samuel Washington Allen Award from the New England Poetry Club. The author of Capture the Flag, Transit, Eve Names the Animals, and six chapbooks, she has published in The New Yorker, Poetry, AGNI, Poetry Ireland Review, and in many other journals, anthologies, and online. She lives, writes, and teaches poetry in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Published in the December 2025 issue: View Contents

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