Anne Boleyn’s ghost

Anne I found you hit

your spine torn

Anne I stood with you and each time I tried to pick you off the road you moved your body 

closer to the hedge and growled like a dog

I stopped and you watched me out of the corner of your big black eye and then you blinked

slow and I did and everything went black

The gamekeeper said sometimes it’s a kindness

He broke your neck behind the hedgerow

To make a big autumn fruit of this

and each quiet death I didn’t question

Some nights the moon

can cast the yard like a blue noon

From here you can hear the feet of each executed queen

hit the cool tiles as they leap

through God’s empty house

Money

In the morning money wins money sounds

like honey the colour gold painted on cheekbones

It girls competing to build the highest skyscraper

out of their own bodies

their fingernails the silver tips

of bird spikes

London turns

red only when its spoilt heart allows

when the money manifests itself in the body

of something human the powerful love

newspapers and charity

everyone on television wears pink as they count

ablush

smoking was my favourite thing

maybe still

she looks so feckless with her cigarette

no one tells us she can buy

new lungs every six to twelve months

O god let me love the It girls

tall minimalist frames

pop alchemy

of white powder and spirits

dance plague queens of coolly wanting It

the most building capital as their followers

make sacrifices of themselves on the hill

to build a foundation

you should have seen the other

fragile towers long gone you should see

they’ve used your eyes for mirrors

mine too but cigarettes

distract the screen on the ceiling

plays a video that makes it look

as though it’s cracked I have no body

like it most when the smoke drifts

out the window

I don’t want to let you

down the bright red money dribbles

from my middle to the earth

and there will be no blood tests

due to the hack

no one can tell me why I don’t work

Dream of the frog and the fire ant

A frog sits cross legged smiling with a fire ant stinging the tip of his index finger.

Fire ants are found in places where regular ants have been eradicated not because the fire ants cause destruction but because they thrive in areas that humans have destroyed.

Jessica O’Brien Rhodes lives in London.