Poetry by David Tucker

Local Heroes (releasing 2026), winner of the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award is David Tucker’s third collection of poems. His first book, Late for Work, won the Bakeless Poetry Prize, selected by Philip Levine, and was published by Houghton Mifflin. He also won a national chapbook contest held by Slapering Hol Press, for Days When Nothing Happens. He was awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship by the Library of Congress, selected by Donald Hall. He studied under Robert Hayden at the University of Michigan. Tucker’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Ploughshares, Mississippi Review, North American Review, Lascaux Review, Narrative, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Friday, Dogwood Poetry Journal, Missouri Review, Florida Review, New Verse News, and Oberon. He received a commendation from the Troubadour International Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition. A native Linden, Tennessee, Tucker has read twice at the Library of Congress and three times on NPR. Ted Kooser selected two of his poems for American Life in Poetry. A career journalist, he supervised investigations for the Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey and edited two Pulitzer Prize winners. He also supervised and edited a two-year long investigation into racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police which received a national news award by the Associated Press, and he edited a George Polk award into rampant steroid use by the New Jersey State Police.

Walking Home from the Bar

 A huge crescent moon 

has stopped over the neighborhood

its arms stretching out 

in a half circle above. And next door

three of my neighbors, all past 80, 

are watching Wheel of Fortune together.

Same routine every weeknight

I can see the categories from the sidewalk. 

That moon, all I can ask for

and the neighbors leaning in like that

what else is there on this fine night, 

Old shoulders almost touching, wheel spinning,

sometimes you just luck out.

 Snow on the Nursing Home

 Snow, cover the nursing home,

fall with mercy, comfort my father 

as he stares out the window.

Come down and scatter 

the names of his life along the sidewalks.

Let Chloe, my mother's name,

melt on the window, Aunt Ginnie's 

disappear as it touches

the hood of a car,

turn his dogs' names to ice,

Brownie, Hurc, and Stack,

Cow names to slush

Bessie, Chipper, Holly B, 

send the names of Big Mama Ada 

and her nine children

cascading though cedars, cop’s names, 

trashmen, housewives and tellers

the people who made who made 

his old town go, strew them

all into other snow

fall with mercy on the nursing home.

 A Break in the Weather

 When I woke from what could not 

have been more than a two-minute-nap 

at my desk, the sun was standing 

everywhere in its bright warrior clothes.

After a week of clouds and rain

the medieval winter was gone,

the sun was just shining, a jar 

of plastic pens was almost ablaze, 

a magazine sleeping face down

gleamed as if about to test

its wings, a leaf shadow blew 

precise and clear on my hand.

Even the brass lamp woke in glory,

it was just the unexpected sunlight 

after days of winter rain—that’s all

but it seemed like more.