Six Poems
Ranjit Hoskote
The Temptation of Eve
Joanna Scott
Easy Games Without Toys
Shelley Jackson
Junior
John Darcy
The Origin Stories
Heather Altfeld
Casino Macabre
James Morrow
Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Live: On Sartorial Games
Kyoko Mori
Omnipresence
Tracie Morris and Charles Bernstein
Game Theory
Catherine Imbriglio
Logbook: Selections
Louis Cancelmi and Pierre Reverdy
Games
David Shields
Cooties
Robin Hemley
Zero-Sum
Joyce Carol Oates
Song of the Andoumboulou: 310
Nathaniel Mackey
Prime of Life
Anelise Chen
RPG
S. P. Tenhoff
Eyes. Gate. Gad. Going. Gold.
Lowry Pressly
A Play of Light on the Windowsill
Cole Swensen
Five Poems
Rae Armantrout
We Could Have Been Kids Together
Lucas Southworth
Double Faults
Kelsey Peterson
Two Poems
Arthur Sze
A Disturbance of Memory
John Dimitroff
The Presenting Problem
Alyssa Pelish
Two Poems
Nam Le
Show
Tim Raymond
Crab and Frog and Scissorman
Justin Noga
Pareidolia
Kate Colby
The Sequence
Brian Evenson
Win, lose, draw. Whether playing by the rules, bending and breaking them, or simply tossing fate to the fickle winds of chance, games are an inescapable part of our lives. Knowingly or not, we are often engaged in zero-sum games with others—or else ourselves—celebrating our victories as we pile up our losses. While it’s true that games are “played,” they sometimes represent lethal danger to the loser. In the world of fables, lives, fortunes, whole kingdoms are forfeited over a risky gamble gone south. And is it so different in our workaday world, where the simplest bad gamble wagered at just the wrong time can result in disaster?
Daily, we find ourselves caught up in vortices of every imaginable kind of game. Word games and war games. Shell games and waiting games.
Schoolyard games, mind games, shadow games, games of chance. There are game theories, confidence games, and those who would try to game the system, which is, to some, fair game. One can beat another at her, his, or their own game, or give the game away. And as for love, the old torch-song standard reminds us, Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game.
Conjunctions:77, States of Play, will explore the myriad games we engage in, the games that rule our lives, and the spectrum of results, from joyous to tragic, that they yield.
Managing Editor
Conjunctions | Bard College
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Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504