qemu-kvm -curses displays garbled screen

when I launch qemu-kvm -curses (even without a guest OS) I get a garbled output, here's a screenshot:
http://kontsevoy.com/qemu.png

some more info:

myarch ~: uname -a
Linux myarch 2.6.34-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jul 5 22:12:11 CEST 2010 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 @ 2.53GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

myarch ~: qemu-kvm --version
QEMU PC emulator version 0.12.5 (qemu-kvm-0.12.5), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

I also fetched the latest qemu-kvm from git repo and compiled it with simple ./configure&make
The compiled version behaved similarly

I also tried different terminal emulators: gnome-terminal and xterm - same thing
I also tried real terminal (i.e. booted without X) - same thing