Hey there hello, welcome to Devastation Baby HQ. Happy to have you. Listen, the editor’s note isn’t why you’re here. I know that, you know that, the statistics on Google Analytics know that. Or maybe you’re a completionist and want to read every word of this issue, and that’s why you clicked through to this. Or maybe you just clicked a random image and it took you here and now you’re wondering if you’re stuck here. Or maybe you’re a sadist. Hello completionists, sadists, and the stuck, you are welcome here.

We have HIGH QUALITY pieces in this here issue. Some real fine reading. Great poetry, great fiction, great in-between bits. We have crust punks, solar punks, cannibalistic love, pure love, deep dives into what love is even about in the first place, apocalyptic post-post-modernism, poetry where the form matters, poetry where the form doesn’t matter, poetry for people who don’t care whether form should matter or not they just wanted to read something sweet, sing-o-grams, dead bodies in the walls, dead bodies in alleyways, live bodies wondering what the hell we’re even doing here anyways. We got it all. Check it out.

Last thing, all of the art in this issue comes from found photos. We dug through bins at junk stores for these, saw the scraps of memories from decades ago that had been chucked into a cardboard box, dusted them off, and loaded them up here onto the web for your enjoyment. We did our best to find an image that fit each piece, even if just tangentially. Hopefully you like what we picked, and if you don’t feel free to go dig something up from your family photo albums and send it our way.

Ok real last thing, thank you to the writers in this issue for trusting Devastation Baby with your work. There are plenty of lit mags out there, and while we’re disorganized and chaotic we are so happy that you chose our corner of the universe as a home for your writing. Thank you to my friend and assistant editor Zoë Brian for their work digging through hundreds of submissions, and to my friend Selle for their willingness to help me find photos and humor my incessant texts about this project. And thank you to you for reading it, and for reading this. You didn’t have to, your time is valuable, thanks for spending it on this site.

Love and devastation,

Andy Beasley
Editor