2 poems

by Doryn Herbst

Dead End Road

On a grassy ledge above the scoured, stony-grey beach,

four of us meet for a picnic, best of friends.

The quiche is fluffy, sandwiches cut into triangle,

wine as cool as the wind.

Waves that break on the shore keep their time for no one.

A gulf widens, covered by another tumbler

of now lukewarm wine.

Monosyllabic answers, swallowed smiles.

Sentences hung on hooks, and not by accident,

drive every story down dingy, dead-end roads

with only the flame of ancient gaslights.

In a gauze-covered sky, geese cry out,

fly in formation.

Vultures

The first birds to circle

beckon their friends.

Vultures have the beak

to peel back the skin

of an elephant, the stomach

to swallow and break down

infested flesh.

Without these acts, thousands

upon thousands of beasts

would rot in open graves,

leaching malady into the earth.

Vultures of the human kind

do not wait for their victims

to be dead.

Doryn’s writing considers the natural world but also darker themes of domestic violence and bullying. Doryn has poetry in Fahmidan Journal, The Dirigible Balloon, CERASUS Magazine, Sledgehammer Literary Journal and more. She is a reviewer at Consilience science poetry journal.