Her beautiful daughter has always distrusted flying dogs
but the madre, a fearless widow, just laughs, insists on
telling the whole story her way—of the one-room walk-
up where her beloved espousa would never have lived—
how just below some damned German Shepherd doesn’t
know a thing about who he’s up against because she’s
a migrant worker and the proud owner of a taco-lovin’
English terrier and oh, how she loves to set him loose!
She tells how that terrier pawed, sniffed, then backed up
and took a risky flyer off her 2nd story balcony like a great
white bat, un párajo blanco grande (and by now, she’s
doblado de risa) forcing her daughter to make suitable rue-
ful noises, because she assumes (and it is here she shakes her
madre off), the dog is dead. But her mother’s still chortling!
“Muerto!? That Wallenda-crazed canine landed on the bricks,
shook himself free, grabbed that Shepherd by the throat and
back-and-forth y adelante y detrás, he flailed that big barker
like a piñata until the bully yelped for mercy!” As it turns out,
that taco-flyer suffered the smallest of scratches on his hairy
chin then marched like a soldado whenever he saw that big
barker after, his fierce woman beside him: conquistadores.