- Now Available: SAND BODIED FLORIDA BOY by grayson thompson-

Sand Bodied Florida Boy

Grayson Thompson’s Sand Bodied Florida Boy is a collection that explores the reimagination of his boyhood, something he did not socially or biologically receive as a Black trans person, and how he grew to make sense of who he would become. It speaks to being an immigrant possibility dream for his Jamaican mother, who has never run from a hurricane but wonders every year about the sandbags, and how he began creating grace out of his name. Accepting that, sometimes, grace rhymes with grief and grief is a doorway word to the flood. Sand Bodied is a love song to the first moment you felt believed in, when hope wasn’t a question, but an answer in every breath you chose to take. It is a collection of poems about the flood breaking through the sandbags, and the person waving a flag on the other side, a lighthouse beacon of becoming, screaming your name. Hollering you home. That person is you. It’s me. It’s any awful thing we never meant to say, or wanted to take back, or meant. It is the hot air of an “i love you” ballooning the sky pink.

Grayson Liam Thompson [he/him]

is a Black, Jamaican-American, queer transgender cowboy poet who moonlights as a therapist. A mouthful, he has been featured recently in Cathexis Northwest Press, Poetry Online, Cleaver (nominated for Best of the Net Anthology), and as a performer for the Exhibit B Literary Variety Show in Kansas City during the 2024 AWP Conference. Grayson is a teaching assistant for poet Buddy Wakefield’s Writer’s Anonymous where he supports emerging and established word assemblers. A wanderer, he lives in Northern California where you can find him hiking, sunbathing, and curating salad recipes. He chooses madness, honest and full-hearted. He hopes you can find some in his poems.