Ghost Man on Second
Winner of the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Mark Jarman, Ghost Man on Second centers on strained family relationships and the search for new homes.
Erica Reid’s debut collection 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.
Erica Reid grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she works in arts marketing. She earned her MFA at Western Colorado University and serves as assistant editor at THINK Journal. Her poetry won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, the Yellowwood Poetry Prize, and the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest (Modern Sonnets category), and was commissioned by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Erica’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Rattle, Birmingham Poetry Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Broadsided Press, The Lyric, Yalobusha Review, and more.
