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.

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