Patrick Kurth
Knife to hand
Gleams in eye
Zinced to a wonder,
Ice in the jungle,
The arctic unchisels in echelons.
Hither fingers
Pinch the wavelip
Churned of mud.
Each measure cuts
Like acid
There’s a routine to the miracle:
Shuck-pry-toast,
Sip of hope,
Tongue tastes tongue slips
Down the throat
It counts where you grow the rocks .
The pith at end is
Bitter as kelp and
A lacquer of silt.
Slurp the sucker whole
With a nip of the sea.
***
Patrick Kurth lives in Berlin, where he helps to run ‘Bridge’, a print and performance series featuring the work of local poets. His own writing can be read in past and forthcoming issues of Third Point, Panoply, Red Flag, Soundings East, River River, and the FU Review.