"Reid’s cunning and mellifluous debut makes the song of the everyday—a quarrel, the human body, an Ohio landscape—come alive in full-throated harmony. Her language is often clever ('There is a tooth / in the word indentured') as well as aurally and visually dynamic ('Shake a man, when you can, by his ribs. / Time is a cracked egg on a slick skillet'). . . . Come for the sonic joy of these poems, stay for Reid’s rich, self-searching meditations on family dysfunction." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Reid’s collection of poems proudly announces her arrival. She raises her fist on the page, demanding unapologetically to be seen." —Rocky Mountain Reader

"Ghost Man on Second is an ambitious and finely-wrought first collection that exhibits Erica Reid’s prowess in poetic form and figuration as well as deeply incisive observations on the nature of family and what and where home can be." —Colorado Review

"Ghost Man on Second gives us grief and endurance, loss and joy, transmuted by the play of verse and imagination into poetry. Its thematic concerns deal with an absent father, suggested by the book’s title, the troubles and determination of a young mother alone, and how these conditions have affected their child. Dilemmas, hurts, yearnings, and elusive retrievals are magically changed by the poet’s sophisticated technical skill into living poems, works of art that invite reading and rereading." —Mark Jarman, author of Zeno’s Eternity

"The speaker of the poems that compose Erica Reid’s Ghost Man on Second is well-acquainted with chaos and its antidote—'the diamond- / shaped cycle' of form, the capacity to tell the tale, to name, and poetry’s cradling music. . . . One feels form’s necessity, the pressure of truth upon it. Each formal experiment provides a nest for the ghost, the angel, and the neglected child that haunt this book. Now and then, a rough upbringing and its consequent emptiness can incite a rare capacity for seeing and chronicling what is. . . . This is a book to re-read, and cherish." —Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

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.