Conjunctions: 77 / States of Play: The Games Issue

Fall 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

Description

Conjunctions: 77, States of Play: The Games Issue

Bradford Morrow

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.