Hot Pot Magazine

By John RC Potter

Allah!

My love
My rock
My soul

I pray to Allah
to keep you safe
from harm.

Ghazal…

And in the silence
of my darkened room
upon that empty bed
a pillow clutched tight
against the fading light
whispers still left unsaid
stave off unwanted gloom
part of this penance.

If my oft-repeated prayers
keep you safe from harm
then no cry need be heard
nor any sounding of alarm.

Güzel…

Yet there is no promise
of what will be or not
it gives this sustenance
and reason to believe
with nothing to deceive
no tender wound to lance
with a knife edge so hot
yet cooled with a kiss.

My devotion continues
uttered in blind faith
to keep you safe.

Maşallah!

John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul.  He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”),  Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”), Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”), The Serulian (“The Memory Box”), The Montreal Review (“Letter from Istanbul”) & Erato Magazine (“A Day in May 1965”).  His story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The author’s gay-themed children’s picture book, The First Adventures of Walli and Magoo, is scheduled for publication.