Nick Allison

I saw a story about ICE agents
eating at a taquería.
Hours later they came back
to cuff the hands that fed them.

I wonder if they finished their plates.
I wonder if they laughed at the table.

I wonder if they slept well that night,
their bellies full
of carnitas and tinga de pollo.

I wonder if they tipped.

Nick Allison is a writer and editor based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost, CounterPunch, The Fulcrum, The Shore, and elsewhere. He is the editor of The Chaos Section, an independent publication focused on politics, power, culture, and the human condition, and co-editor of The Chaos Section Poetry Project, which has published three poetry anthologies to date. He also secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person, probably because it makes him feel a little more important than he actually is.

This poem appears in Uprooted: Poems of Resistance, Witness, and Survival (The Chaos Section Poetry Project, Fall 2026). We’re sharing each poem from the collection individually over the coming weeks. You can read the full book or download the free PDF here.