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Do You Want to Be Well?

Dappled Things

Laura Reece Hogan

he asks. Seems like a simple question

the man lies in a roughshod portico in Jerusalem
at the edge of the healing pool of Bethesda,
sick for thirty-eight years.

Was the inquiry ironic? Emphasis on want?

Can you blame the man for being
a little defensive, maybe you

or I also would start telling Jesus about how

we do not have,
how no one helps,
how we cannot move,
how everybody else
gets there first.
See this paralyzing
weight of flesh,
these problems,
these people,
rooting me motionless
even in the presence
of the divine cure.

But then that pointed question reduces
cuts through the noise,
brings

the excuses boomeranging home:
Do you want to be well?

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Filed Under: SS. Peter and Paul 2019

Mary, Queen of Angels 2020

Purchase Featuring nonfiction from Joshua Hren, fiction from Jennifer Marie Donahue and Rob Davidson and the winners and honorees of the Bakhita Prize in Visual Arts.

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