Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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With its hills and cobblestones
Rome takes a toll on the feet.
After walking through the catacombs of San Callista,
We were struggling our way to the site of Quo Vadis,
Where Peter, escaping from the Mamertine Prison,
Met Jesus on the Appian Way, walking towards Rome.

“Where are you going?” he asked his Lord,
Who answered that he is going to be crucified a second time
Because Peter is too cowardly to do it;
At which Peter, humiliated, returns to Rome
For his inverted crucifixion.

Inside the Church built on this spot,
The guide book says, are a pair of footprints in stone,
Supposedly left by Christ as he stood his ground there on the Appian Way.
But our own feet are swollen from days of sightseeing.
We only limp as far as the field in which a flock of ewes

Are lying next to their snowy newborn lambs.
The mothers baa low, and their babies answer in their high pitched response.
Again and again, dozens of them, in a chorus of life,
Which we consider enough of a miracle for one day,
And so we return to the bus.


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who with his wife Jeanne, divides his time between Pennsylvania and Winter Garden, Fl. His work has appeared in many journals. His one collection is SOUTH OF SCRANTON.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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Because my adult daughter is ill,
And since my ex is out of town,
I agree to return to the house I abandoned years before.

Since the doorbell is broken, I knock.
As soon as I enter I feel as I did when I walked past the photos of my father
That were displayed near his casket as I went to kiss him good-bye.

But here it is my own dead life on display.
On the dingy walls are the framed pictures
Of vacations taken long ago.

And though I am in none of them, I’m in all of them,
Because I was the one who snapped the photos,
Like the one from the balcony in Taormina,

Of the sun rising over Italy
With the small sailboat in front of it;
Or the one of Mont St. Michele with late morning light reflecting off its windows

As if the church was a jewel with many facets;
Or the twilit reds and oranges of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado,
Where the two sandstone hills resemble kissing camels.

And I find myself suffocating as I did right before I left,
As if I’m in that moonlit photo
Of the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans,

One of the poor souls stricken with yellow fever,
And prematurely buried inside his family tomb,
Trying to ring the bell that will save his life.


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who with his wife Jeanne, divides his time between Pennsylvania and Winter Garden, Fl. His work has appeared in many journals. His one collection is SOUTH OF SCRANTON.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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In an old Italian neighborhood bar,
Three elderly women sit like the Fates on their stools.
The one in the middle looks like a prom queen emeritus,
While the ones on either side are her attendants,
Just as they were fifty years ago.

Each has dyed her hair blond and wears a thick glaze of make-up
Making her skin look like puffed pastry.
Each sips a water-colored martini,
Studying the room for men, a life- long habit,
Like making the sign of the cross in front of a church.

From the opposite end of the bar,
A short fat man who they know and tolerate
Like the harmless nerd who let them copy his geometry notebook
Approaches.
After talking to them for a few moments,

And eliciting some forced smiles,
He pulls from his jacket pocket a large thin package and lays it on the bar.
Playfully, he reaches his arms around the waist of the middle woman
Making her cringe as if he might grab her breasts.
Instead, he unwraps a large sopressata.

Looking at the shriveled, brownish- black foot-long sausage
The three women simultaneously laugh
And begin comparing it to dead lovers,
Saying things like “Carlo was half that, just like his father;”
“And young Gino never got it hard so I couldn’t tell you.”

“Tony felt that big when I had him take me from behind,”
The Hall of Fame prom queen says,
Which makes the one on the left stop laughing.
The speaker immediately realizes the mistake
Of mentioning her friend’s dead husband.

For a moment there are only silence and glares,
Until the queen says to the man who brought the sausage
“See the trouble you men always start with that.”
Then to the bartender, “Bring a sharp knife
“So we can cut this into bite- size pieces.”


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who with his wife Jeanne, divides his time between Pennsylvania and Winter Garden, Fl. His work has appeared in many journals. His one collection is SOUTH OF SCRANTON.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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Other than her psychiatrist,
Nobody wants to see her,

With her hysterical laughter,
Irritating everyone else at the grave site,

Whispering how the pall bearers should wear matching t-shirts
Like a bowling team as they place the body on the straps above the grave;

Asking, as the priest sprinkles holy water,
If the dead man learned to tie his noose by practicing tourniquets;

Telling the old uncle who is crying and trembling with Parkinson’s,
That it’s hardly worth his effort to leave the cemetery.

When one of the mourners whispers for her to be more respectful,
She asks if she should whine like the others, as if life were a continuous 911 call?

This is how her psychiatrist said God made her,
And they’ll just have to accept the way she mourns.


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who with his wife Jeanne, divides his time between Pennsylvania and Winter Garden, Fl. His work has appeared in many journals. His one collection is SOUTH OF SCRANTON.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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My long suit, ignorance, sat me on the jury.
Never had I heard of the plaintiff,
Nor suffered a heart attack that I was aware of,
Nor ever employed either lawyer
To help me recant a confession.

It was a civil suit, in which the son of the deceased sought
Restitution for his father’s refusal to lose weight
And take his medicine.
For him, his father was worth at least enough money to buy a half-decent suit,
Not the tight fitting one he was wearing in the court room,

With a shirt that wouldn’t button at the neck
And a black tie that was too short.
He had found a lawyer with a lisp and a hearing aid who agreed
There must be remedy for a seventy-eight year old man no longer with us.
Somebody should pay, even if he had done nothing wrong.

The two doctors in question had enough money:
The family doctor, who had cautioned the old man
That his heart wouldn’t survive on hope alone,
Who prescribed the right pills, and had encouraged him, as a friend, to take them,
Certainly dressed well, down to his diamond cufflinks;

And the prestigious heart surgeon, in his impeccable Armani,
Who in two weeks of trial had to forego ten open-heart operations,
At fifty thousand each, and still could say amusing, informative things on the stand,
Like the blood thinner used in the heart-lung machine is derived from salmon sperm,
Claimed he had done all he could, but old men die.

At the summation, the son’s attorney belittled the defendants’ attitude
Of expecting his client to merely shake an angry fist at the sky.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” he said,
“That’s what barbarians and heathens do;
“Not civilized men in suits.”


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who divides his time between Northeastern Pennsylvania, which has all the charm of an underground parking garage, and Winter Garden, Florida.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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(For H.D.)

Against the September night,
Cool blue lights wash the colossal rusting stacks
That were the blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel.

This is not the pure white light that jewels the Parthenon,
With its columns in the golden ratio of a man’s body;
Where the virgin goddess once guarded the Athenian treasure
And accepted her people’s solemn song,
As they led the sacred bull to sacrifice in her honor,
Thanking her for the blessed olive,
And her protection in time of war.

Rather, it is the ghost of the machine that is conjured,
Here, in Bethlehem, where the American Century was born;
Where the genius of utility was based not on some vague myth in an old poem,
But on the heart of the periodic table.
The monstrous size of the furnaces,
The perfect metaphor for the profits that the owners made,
And their egos that transformed the earth into beams for skyscrapers
That humbled Babylon;
That slung bridges over mighty brown rivers,
That forged rails that bound the country
Like a mad patient in an asylum.

Here the raw materials of coal and ore and men
Were transformed in the fumes and heat,
Into sheets of steel stamped out by gigantic presses
Into the battleships and engines that drove the Twentieth Century,
Leaving behind ashes and spilled molten iron,
And the dried sweat of consumable lives.

It’s all closed now, gone the way any religion
Or venture does,
When a more efficient process comes along.
And because it’s unprofitable to tear it down,
It’s been turned into a museum with a performing arts center,
Where tonight blues musicians growl out their tunes before a wall of windows,
Behind which the massive stacks loom.

At night, walking at the foot of the Acropolis,
One might imagine ancient songs of praise
Or pleas to Athena to guard the beloved city.
Here, in Bethlehem, are the blues.


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who divides his time between Northeastern Pennsylvania, which has all the charm of an underground parking garage, and Winter Garden, Florida.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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Just because they feel like chew toys
For both their men and god,
Doesn’t mean their kids have to feel that way.
At least, not yet.

So the mothers take them
To the tiered fountain by Charleston Bay,
To wash themselves of the awful August heat,
To splash in the cool spraying water,

Near the sign that reads “Positively no bathing.”
They’re not too young to learn
That sometimes
Trespassing is the only way to get by.


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who divides his time between Northeastern Pennsylvania, which has all the charm of an underground parking garage, and Winter Garden, Florida.

Contributor: Ron Yazinski

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After wild spring winds snapped it at the stump,
The ornamental cherry tree lies across the front yard,
Dead, but blossoming one last time
In its customary frenzy of pink and white.

Behind it, on the front porch of the family home,
Four brothers remember the day a half-century ago
When mom chose it for her new house,
And dad, who hated yard work, planted it.

Then they mention the pictures
Most of their kids had taken in front of this tree
When they stopped to see grandma
On their way to the prom;

Then one pulls out his cell phone
With its photo from last year,
Of mom holding her great grandchild
In front of this same tree.

Finally, there is the estate to be settled.
They agree that the tree will have to be removed
Before the house is put on the market.
And how it’s a shame the neighborhood has deteriorated;

Then silence, as they realize this is the last time
They will ever feel comfortable here;
And the one from New England says
“Just imagine how sweet that wood will smell when it burns.”


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Ron Yazinski is a retired English teacher, who divides his time between Northeastern Pennsylvania, which has all the charm of an underground parking garage, and Winter Garden, Florida.