Theme 08: "Bright Lights, Dark City, Part Deux"

Now that we have had a taste of the rural life (Theme 06: “Bucolia”) and a bite of the big city (Theme 07: “Bright Lights, Dark City”, The Argyle is going to stay a while as we have had a large number of responses to our call for Theme 07. We will continue our theme into Issue No. #9, offering our readers a “Part Deux.” So, we will accept submissions of poetry, fiction, CNF, and digital art that center around urban life with all its glamors and all its pitfalls. We want front row seats for the “rat race.” Accounts from casualties of urban sprawl. Mainly, though, we want glimpses of life underground that are strange enough to be true, which could include (but are not limited to) existential crises in art galleries, the plight of sex dungeons during a nationwide bleach shortage, street vendors with questionably sourced ingredients, street prophets that can actually predict the future, socialites who run illegal cockfights in their poolhouses, and desperate writers that sell their souls to the devil for a spot in the Paris Review. Give us the real. Give us the absurd. Give us a dazzling—but sobering—look at the dirty underbelly of city life. Above all, your submissions should reflect the humanity beneath it all. The triumphs. The failings. The ongoing struggle for more __________ (fill in the blank).