A poem for Black Bag and a list of cruel films for you

April is the cruellest month, after all...

Black Bag (2025)

by Sennah Yee

Detect the two truths and the lie:

I know all of your secrets
I know all of your lies
I know it’s all worth it

We only like each other in the dark
Everyone looks good in black
You don’t deserve white lies

I don’t know how to tell you
The chicken is cooked just right
I’m starving, darling

There’s a body in the dining room
There’s a body in the pond
There’s a body in our bed

I will kill for you
I will die for you
I will live for you

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Last Call: Submit to Issue 13 🏫

Submissions for Issue 13: TEEN close this week! We’ve extended the deadline to May 4th:

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The Cruellest Films

Editor’s Note from Gabrielle Marceau

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

—T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

I was obsessed with “The Waste Land” in my first year of university, and maybe particularly with these first few lines. I related to this vision of life returning painfully after the inoculation of winter (think also of Emily Dickinson’s 372: “After great pain, a formal feeling comes – / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs–” another poem I was fixated on).

“The Waste Land” paints a world unable to shake the devastation of the First World War—Eliot describes crowds of ghosts cramming the streets, persisting when he would like to forget. It seems cruel and unnatural that life should continue, unabated, after the trauma the land has endured, “[...] what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” What gall those little bluebells have!

The seasons don’t care if you’re ready or not, they rudely disrupt your rest or your fun. But when it comes to cruelty in art, we usually have the choice to endure it or abstain. And we get even more warning with films, which have trailers and rating systems and websites listing a plot’s granular, gory details. So what compels us to press play?