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b'Slushies, do you know your shades and types of blue? Do you know how to say blue in Russian? When we talk of St. Petersburg, are we talking about Russia? Or Florida? When we discuss Max Lasky\\u2019s poems we discuss what we call things and how we write things and what to call the things we write. (Discuss what \\u2018lyric\\u2019 means amongst yourselves.) \\u201cCome Here\\u201d takes the table to a scene in Maryland, once home to Jason and his long \\u201cO,\\u201d and is heavy in Hikmet. After reading \\u201cProthalamion Poured from a Copper Cezve,\\u201d a love poem or a poem about love, we continue to praise Lasky\\u2019s juggling of images and figurative tight-rope walking.\\nThis episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song \\u201cSpaghetti with Loretta\\u201d now opens our show.\\nAt the table: Samantha Neugebauer, Alex J. Tunney, Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, and Marion Wrenn\\nMax Lasky is a poet from New Jersey, currently living in Maryland with his fianc\\xe9 where they are raising two plant children: a hardy mum named Thomas, and a basil plant named Bunting. Max is finishing up his final year in the MFA program at the University of Maryland and earned his B.A. from Ramapo College. His poems have been published by Trillium and Frontier Poetry, and he is the co-founder and editor of the literary magazine Leavings. He lives in and for the slush.\\n\\nCome Here\\nWe read Hikmet during what she calleda picnic, though we brought no wicker basket,no plaid blanket, we rolled our jeans upunder our knees to wade across the river,wide and knee high, the entire riverbedbedded with sharp rocks covered in moss,slick enough beneath our bare feet to make uswalk slow, half cautious, as a group of five menflyfishing spoke Spanish, reeling in fishtoo small to keep, taking swigs from warmbeer cans at the shore when they turned bored,wanting us to leave. We stayed. As did the birdspitching in a nearby thicket, almost inaudiblenear the pop blaring from a portable speaker,and a quiet drone flew high above the water.Which is to say nature\\u2019s no more, at leastnot there in Catonsville, Maryland, mid August,where the Patapsco flowing toward the Chesapeakecould double as the sound of traffic passingon a highway. All the plastic, all the tin cansand wrappers littered across the rocks, the sand\\u2014and yet hopeless is not something to be,not for me or Hikmet or my love, who smirkswhen I say a new Turkish word correctly.My love, what are we to do? We loungedon that ripped towel, smoking, when we should\\u2019vescoured the shoreline picking up trash. In masksbecause of a pandemic, not one personwalking past on the trail looked us in the eyeor said hi, how are you? I lose a little hope\\u2026I hope a little less and learn a new language,or try. I learn how the river was commandeeredfrom Native American tribes by dead men, white menwho wanted to fuel their new plants and mills,men who never imagined the future here,hundreds of years later, or else just didn\\u2019t care,not for us or the two women who walkedhand in hand, a leashed dog barking at their feet,not the men who spoke Spanish and looked at meconfused when I asked what kind of fish is that?I already knew it was a trout. I already knewHikmet was a communist who loved Marx and Leninand each of his three wives. Some of us striveto better the world, some strive to better ourselves,and the striving sometimes transcends joy.Hikmet tried both not long ago when he wrote\\u201cMy strength is that I\\u2019m not alone in this big world.The world and its people are no secret in my heart,no mystery in my science. Calmly and openly,I took my place in the great struggle.\\u201d I turnedto face a warm wind that laced my face with sand,for the future\\u2019s everchanging, before it even happens\\u2026Come here and change me, you whose tongueon my tongue tastes of Turkish tobacco, and sun,you who say the unsayable. Come here, a\\u015fk\\u0131m,lend me your hope, teach me how to grin againafter two decades of elegy and a broken languagerife with misogy'