Conquistadores

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.