Lucinda Sabino

Prison Rules, Women’s Prison Museum, Viet Nam

(photo of inmate with infant)


Your rules for us are posted
on the cinderblock wall
of the dirty kitchen where we gather
in the morning, released from our cells
to drink watery tea or soup.
Because many of us cannot read,
the guard shouts them out, the words
become a false prayer, or a girlish
song to ward off witches. Or a lullaby
for a dead child.

Because I know the kindness
with which a mother can smother
her baby, I do not sing to mine.
She already turns her black eyes
toward the clang of the door shutting.

Lucinda Sabino has spent over 50 years involved in the lives of children. She is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and spent 20 years as the owner/operator of an infant and toddler day care center. Writing about the way family and culture dovetail, she draws on her travel experiences, especially those involving the varied lives of children. She has two poetry chapbooks, We’re Coming Close and Dancing in the Intersection. Part of the Detroit area poetry community, she has taught Advanced Poetry through Springfed Arts and is an active supporter of InsideOut Literary Arts.