A Congregation of Alligators

A two-lane Florida roadway opened in 1968. Now a superhighway, Alligator Alley, quickly became a dangerous place for tired people driving to (or from) the outline of home. A reckoning of which came first, the person or the dinosaur, straddling becoming. Grayson arrived to this book at the collision, and meant every word. Found each answer at the corner of rebellion and tenderness. Was afraid of the dark the entire time and still is. A self-described sand-bodied Florida boy, A Congregation of Alligators explores what happens when the stories we've been told about ourselves, as old as the beginning and taught to us so true that they feel prehistoric, were put to rest.

About the Author :
Grayson Thompson is a Black, Jamaican-American, queer trans cowboy poet moonlighting as a therapist. A mouthful, Grayson is winner of Write Bloody's 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize and Foglifter Press' 2024 Start A Riot! Chapbook Prize for Sand Bodied Florida Boy. He's been featured in Cathexis Northwest, Cleaver, Poetry Online, and other homes for poetry. During the 2024 AWP Conference, Grayson opened for the amazing Donika Kelly with Chicago's Exhibit B. Grayson is a TA for Buddy Wakefield's Writer's Anonymous, supporting emerging and established word assemblers. A wanderer, he lives in Northe

Review :
"Thompson's book is, despite what many would have us believe, an American story. It is about the power to make oneself over, to build on the rubble of the past something new, better, more. Throughout this achingly beautiful collection, Thompson falls apart and comes back together again, over and over and over in a brutal reshaping, diving into tsunami waves to come out the other side, themselves. An essential read." - Eirinie Carson, author The Dead Are Gods "When the world, your family, the news on the evening television tries to erase and distort you, we need anthems of becoming that allow us to dream and imagine a world we get to claim and love ourselves. To exist without being at war with your body is the light these poems are reaching for, reminding us that "for the people whose families can't hold them/you were born to swim". Thompson's poems bring us through fear and violence to the beautiful possibilities of queer love, the audacity of survival, and how forgiving others with generosity can be a part of how we heal and free ourselves. The beautiful lyricism of these poems, the adamant entanglement with love and authenticity is exactly what we need." - Noah, Arhm, author of Cut To Bloom