your split ends
blend of seven reds
rust, rose, russet
frostbite, temper
radio flyer, et cetera
just barely brush
your ruddy collar
like a picador mantle hangs
over trampled soil

what did you do with all that hair?
clipped it with scissors
heaped it high in the corner
lit it afire to keep my care warm

gently, ember, each cringe wrings
currant wine from your shoulder
that burns all down your sternum
i think its too early to be drunk again

drink anyway

drink before it stains your down duvet,
drink before you gore me
drink before gauze daubed in blood
i paint you like a mesa of cezannese apples

had i come upon you
sooner than the blood flushed
from your eclipse
we might’ve loved right there
with hair
and the flesh-heat
spread wide on the sidewalk

Tomas Kurth is a young American working mostly from Berlin’s ever-damp metros. He started writing in verse several years back, to make a record of sense. He earned his first publication credit in the last issue of The Watershed Review, with subsequent others on the way with Red Flag Poetry and the FU Review.