WEBVTT

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OK, this series
I'm going to read

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is a series that's
fairly new, so I'm

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going to sort of sandwich it in.

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And it's kind of only
titled "Limbo Babies"

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and there are five of these
poems I'm going to read.

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And you have to keep
in mind that limbo--

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I read this once
and somebody thought

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I meant those babies,
you know, not babies

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but that the babies were
going under the bar, you know?

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But that's not the kind of
limbo baby I'm talking about.

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I'm talking about that place
that they tell you about,

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if you go to Catholic school,
that all the babies who are

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unbaptized wind up in limbo.

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So anyway-- and,
you know, I thought

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this was sort of a worthy
thing to investigate

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in a sequence of poems.

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So "Limbo Babies."

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"This fall, 25 more babies
will be relegated to limbo,

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according to sister
Mary Francis.

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We sat in the back row
drawing a tree, a heart,

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a man with a mustache
while in limbo,

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25 babies floated in a mist.

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Disembodied is how we saw them.

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A little sad, thinner
than usual babies, bald.

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And then the bell rang,
Sister Mary Frances

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shook her nun's sleeves.

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Her glasses held the
glint of scissors.

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The limbo babies just
floated around for eternity.

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No spelling, no
dinner, no homework."

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