Ghost Man on Second - Paperback

by Erica Reid (Author)

A debut poetry collection centered on strained family relationships and the search for new homes.

Erica Reid's debut collection, Ghost Man on Second, traces a daughter's search for her place in the world after estrangement from her parents. Reid writes, "It's hard to feel at home unless I'm aching." Growing from this sense of isolation, Reid's poems create new homes in nature, in mythology, and in poetic forms--including sestinas, sonnets, and golden shovels--containers that create and hold new realizations and vantage points. Reid stands up to members of her family, asking for healing amid dissolving bonds. These poems move through emotional registers, embodying nostalgia, hurt, and hope. Throughout Ghost Man on Second, the poems portray Reid's active grappling with home and confrontation with the ghosts she finds there.

Ghost Man on Second is the winner of the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Mark Jarman.

Author Biography

Erica Reid grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she works in arts marketing and serves as assistant editor at THINK Journal. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Rattle, Birmingham Poetry Review, the Inflectionist Review, the MacGuffin, Santa Fe Literary Review, Broadsided Press, Foothill, Able Muse, the Lyric, Yalobusha Review, Tiny Seed, and others.