For Karen

My students in Algebra class

gather dollars,

peeled from backpacks and pockets.

They want pizza. “Please!”

My credit card rewards the missing amount.

Delivery is near. Time for a prayer.

I often start with

Ojala,

A word borrowed by Spain from the Moors,

“law sha allah”, if Allah should want.

Ojala que - wait,

if I wish in Spanish for something that is even remotely possible,

I use subjunctive. If my wish is not at all possible, I use the imperfect (past) subjunctive.

I’m not sure.

I’ll start anyway.

I pray, Ojala,

O Holy Father,

Any and all gods,

please save them.

Kids who are lost,

in between places, undefined.

Save them from that which is

Violent

Disparate

Desperate.

Save them from fentanyl, stupidity, bigotry.

Let them not die out, more

wasted boys of El Salvador:

Extinct.

Absent.

In Bagdad, 813 AD, al-Khwarizmi wrote word problems about inheritance:

take from one side, then one must balance by taking from the other.

“Uniting broken parts”-

al-jabr.

al-Khwarizmi,

his name became our word algorithm-

rules that dictate what must happen. But really,

must it?

Solve this problem, will you, dear Allah: if you take away one boy,

just one,

how can you

balance for his loss on the other side?