Jagged javelin flowers as sharp as teeth
burgeon up barbed pickets, a bobbing
Ceratosaurus head – not the blackberry
bush I ordered, but a hunter. Its briary
cranked neck has conquered the garden.

I expected a Saltasaurus, some benevolent
queen. I would have welcomed her celestial
climb along the pole up onto the rooftop, each
green spine-spike a rung on some heavenly
ascent to martyrdom for her children.

I arm with a butcher’s knife, prevail against the peril
of puncture wounds, scale a stepladder, whack
and hack the spurred serpent, watch it wind down
to the dirt without fanfare or swoop, only a wisp
of crackling as the dragon falls slain.

You and your raspberry bushes on the other side
of the fence, your Stegosaurus rosebush and what
you do not want to see over the hedge, go ahead –
laugh, you Lancelot neighbor, you – with sprouting
daffodils, early-rising tomato plants, cherry trees.

This thick-boned medieval beer maiden hears you
among the blowing thistle, weeds, errant jasmine
creeping your way. Think of how a knight fell with
his spear, his skeleton found 1,000 years later –
hugging tree roots, cause of death unknown.