Thank you to Melissa Lemay and Andrew Wilson for featuring the poem I wrote with my daughter Phoebe at Collaborature. It’s a wonderful site where writers and artists come together to create, connect, and celebrate honest, original work. Check it out!
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A Small Housekeeping Update (That No One Asked For)
When I first set up The Truth About Tigers, it was supposed to be strictly a poetry site. A place to write poems, share them, get feedback, and hopefully get better. Simple enough.
Lately, though, I’ve realized I’ve got stuff scattered everywhere. Substack, Medium, social media, a couple of blogs I’m about to delete, and a handful of random files floating around on my MacBook and in Google Drive. And that’s not counting the more polished political pieces I’ve written for places like The Fulcrum, HuffPost, and The Chaos Section. I’m a very organized person by nature (read: chronic, unmedicated obsessive-compulsive disorder), and it’s getting hard for me to remember where things live. The disorganization is making my brain itch.
So, I’m consolidating. I’m going to start posting some non-poetry pieces here and migrating a few over from other sites. Not the “polished” stuff that gets published elsewhere, but the posts that read more like a traditional blog or a secret-public journal. Think less punditry, more sitting-with-a-cup-of-coffee creative rambling. The more polished political essays I’ve written (and continue to write) will stay where they’re published.
No big plan, no upload schedule, and probably no real need for this post. I just felt like overexplaining the change to keep the OCD demons happy. Thanks for reading.
—Nick
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How Good Fine Can Be
It’s not pleasure, not really.
More the absence of pain—
the way a tooth feels fine until the ache returns,
and you realize how good fine can be.Not contentment, but the absence of fear.
Not confidence, but the lack of comparison.
Not peace, but a brief reprieve
from wanting things to be any different than they are.The Buddhists might call it the end of craving.
I might call it the pause between songs,
when the silence still hums from what came before
and the next note hasn’t yet claimed the air.I try to remember not to chase fireworks,
to remember that the truest freedom
is the moment after the flash—when everything goes dark again,
and the night feels endless
and kind.
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On Not Writing: Some Nights the Work Is Just to Listen
Some nights the work is just to listen. The page can wait. The mind still gathers, and even silence can be practice. And yet sometimes that silence drives the hands anyway and a few words spill out, maybe the mind’s way of making sense of the stillness itself.
There’s a version of me that I really like. He’s the kind of person I want to spend time with. When I pay attention to how I do small things, I catch glimpses of him in the automatic rhythm of tying my shoes, the way I pour coffee, how I greet the day. Each minor, everyday act says something about the person I’m still becoming.
Attention has a way of adjusting the focus until the picture sharpens just a little. If I watch my daughter walk from the car to the school door and try to stay with the moment instead of the checking the clock. If I choose a record with intention, drop the needle, and really listen without scrolling. If I take a quiet walk without headphones and just… walk, feel each step rolling forward, remembering what it means to inhabit a body, to belong to time.
I think maybe character and contentment aren’t built in the grand decisions but in the patience of noticing. The smallest acts, done with care, keep teaching me how to move through the larger ones with steadiness and presence and a little less fear.
And when I truly notice people, really see them, kindness stops feeling like effort and becomes the only response that has ever made sense: to look someone in the eye, see the child they once were, and meet them there, in that brief light of recognition before the moment passes.
There’s no real point here, no grand wisdom, nothing new. Sometimes it just feels good to write whatever floats to the surface, not polished or perfect or sharp or whatever. Just practice and flow. Creation for its own sake, perhaps. A way of closing the day with a few honest words. Or at least as close to honest as I feel comfortable getting right now.
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Feel Free
To don a bright mask for the faithful to see
To placate the flock and pretend to believe
To drag the dead weight of unbroken chains
To laugh until laughter devours the painTo plant the old flags and ring the new bells
To raise up the prices and see what still sells
To imagine that freedom is only a jest
To swallow your pride till it rots in your chestTo close all the windows and fasten the doors
To bury your secrets beneath the sea floor
To climb golden stairs till you stand at the top
To fall with the world when at last it all stopsTo bolster your ego with glory and praise
To purchase a past with the fortune you’ve raised
To summon the fire and melt back the ice
To never look once at their sacrificeTo turn up the volume and smother the cries
To vanish in madness and cover your eyes
To cut out your tongue to spite your own face
To put profit above the whole human raceTo pull out your hair and to tear at the walls
To pave over gardens and silence the calls
To load up the cannons, the weapons of war
To never once ask who the cages are forTo dream of the faces you’ve lost all at once
To wake with their shadows and feel their cold touch
To walk through the mirror and linger a while
To shine your dark shoes and lie with a smileTo pin every failure on somebody else
To go to your grave deceiving yourself
To polish a crown and call yourself king
To scream for the stillness your riches won’t bringTo weep late at night in a bed all alone
Your palace of pleasure turned prison of stone
Surrounded by ghosts who won’t let you be
You’ll ask yourself why
you still don’t feel free
A slightly different version ofd Feel Free was first published at The New Verse News.
This poem was sparked by Jeff Tweedy’s new song, also called “Feel Free.” The shared title is obviously intentional, though the poem follows its own path. If you’re into poetry and haven’t spent time with Wilco or Tweedy, I’d recommend it. I think his lyrics have that same mix of plainspoken clarity and odd, dreamlike turns, lines that stick in your head and keep unfolding, much like in certain poems… maybe closer to William Carlos Williams or Frank O’Hara than anything polished for radio. He makes everyday language feel strange, and alive.
Feel free
Get yourself born in the USA
Love with a love they can’t take away
Feel free
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Good Enough
It’s not pleasure, not really. More like the absence of pain, the way a tooth feels fine until the ache returns and you realize how good fine can be. Most days, I move through life on autopilot, not noticing fine at all. I think maybe that’s the case for most of us. I only recognize it when something starts to hurt. When my back twinges, the way forty-five-year-old working-class backs tend to do. When the car makes a new sound. When someone I love is struggling. Then I remember how effortless things were a moment ago, when nothing demanded my attention.
It’s strange how rarely we name the absence of trouble. We give words to suffering, to joy, to longing and relief, but not to the even, unremarkable calm that sits between them. Maybe that’s why it slips away so easily.
It’s not contentment, but the absence of fear. Not confidence, but the lack of comparison. Not peace, exactly, but a brief reprieve from wanting things to be any different than they are. The Buddhists might call it the end of craving. I like to think of it as the pause between songs, when the silence still hums with what came before and the next note hasn’t yet claimed the air.
Sometimes I catch myself chasing the fireworks. The new projects and loud opinions and background noise, mistaking the bright moments for meaning. But the truest relief comes right after the flash, when everything goes dark again and the night feels endless and kind. I think maybe fine is enough. Life, in its quiet and ordinary way, is almost always better than it seems, if I remember to notice it before the next inevitable ache begins.
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The First Poem I Ever Memorized
“You’re sick of the game!” Well, now, that’s a shame.
You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
“You’ve had a raw deal!” I know — but don’t squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.—Robert Service
When my sister and I were kids, The Quitter by Robert Service hung on the fridge, held up by a magnet. Our mom made it a rule that we had to memorize the middle stanza. You might think that’s the kind of thing that would annoy a twelve-year-old, and that he’d only come to appreciate it later in life—but honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t remember it ever feeling like a chore. Who knows. Memory’s a weird thing. But I do know it pretty quickly became one of my favorite poems. I went ahead and memorized the first and third stanzas too, and never forgot them. At 45, I can still recite the whole thing without even thinking about it.
Over the years, the poem became a kind of mantra for me. Whenever things got difficult, that familiar line would pop into my mind like magic: You’re sick of the game? Well now, that’s a shame… It stayed with me through the mess of adolescence, into young adulthood, through basic training, leading an infantry squad in Iraq, getting out and figuring out how to be a civilian, and eventually becoming a parent. Whenever it felt like a decent moment to throw myself a pity party—or maybe even throw in the towel—those lines would show up like an old friend, reminding me to buck up and do my damndest.
The poem hangs on my fridge now. I’m not sure my own kids can recite the middle stanza yet, let alone the whole thing, but someday they will. I feel extremely lucky to have the parents I do. My sister, Meridith, would say the same. They worked hard, expected us to do the same, to pull our weight, and not back down from something just because it was difficult. They’re kind, intelligent, and generous people who have always loved us unconditionally. A lot of the things they did and said have stuck with me, and I’ve tried to carry those lessons and words into my own parenting, though I don’t know if they’ve landed the same way. Time will tell.
Of all the good things they passed down—and there were plenty—The Quitter stands out to me as one of the more memorable wins in the parenting department. Just a printed poem stuck to the fridge, no lecture attached. But the message was clear, and it stayed with me: no matter what life throws at you, even when the chips are down and hope feels out of sight, if you’re still breathing, you can still fight.
And when you fail (because you will), get up, dust yourself off, and give it one more try. It’s the plugging away that wins the day.
— Nick Allison
If you haven’t read The Quitter in a while—or ever—you should. And it just so happens to be directly below this sentence… isn’t that convenient.
The Quitter
Robert Service
When you’re lost in the Wild, and you’re scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you’re sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: “Fight all you can,”
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow . . .
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.“You’re sick of the game!” Well, now, that’s a shame.
You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
“You’ve had a raw deal!” I know — but don’t squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten — and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight —
Why, that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.
This essay originally appeared at The Chaos Section under the title “Buck Up and Do Your Damnedest.”
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A Visitor’s Guide to Free Coffee
When you spend enough time in a hospital—
as a visitor, not a patient—
you start to learn a few things.Like how the coffee costs more
at the first-floor café
than it does on the second.But it’s free in the fourth-floor ICU,
where there’s an honest-to-God espresso machine.
Outpatient surgery on three
offers a complimentary pour-over.And if you befriend the nurses,
they might let you slip into the lounge,
where snacks and caffeine
cost nothing.You’ll learn other things, too—
Like how, one afternoon in the cafeteria,
while drafting a poem you might call
A Visitor’s Guide to Free Coffee,
a young mother and her son—
his head bald from chemo—
will walk in.You’ll watch his face light up
over a bowl of cereal
and feel ridiculous
for thinking about the cost of coffee
in a place built to save
the most vulnerable.The boy will beam at his mom,
thrilled by the simple gift of Cocoa Puffs.
She’ll smile back—
brave, bone-tired—
and lean in to kiss his pale scalp,
her whole world on the edge of crumbling
behind those worn-out eyes.
Note: A version of “A Visitor’s Guide to Free Coffee” was first published as a prose poem at Six Sentences — July 2025.
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How to Fix Everything
I probably lied to her
when she asked about the future of her world—
what else can you do
when a young child pictures fields of fire,
fueled by the fossils we burn,
hands clutching rifles tighter than reason,
the quiet neglect of those left
shivering on street corners?I see the same—
though I wish I didn’t.
So instead, I whispered of hope—
hope in her generation,
better than ours,
believing they can mend
the mess we leave behind.A parent never wants to see fear
reflected in their child’s eyes—
or worse, the slow dimming of belief
that things will get better.What I don’t see—
not yet at least—
is disappointment.
But it will come,
with age and understanding,
with eyes that once gazed hopefully at the future,
now looking back to me for answers—because I am the goddamn adult here,
and I should know how to fix everything.
This poem was first published in Dissident Voice, Poetry on Sunday, July 20, 2025.
I’m grateful to the editors for including this piece.
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A Sky That Never Promised Freedom
“A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
—The Declaration of IndependenceWe strike the match,
follow the fuse.
Gunpowder curls into skyborne bloom—
a brief, bright rupture
meant to mark the birth of liberty.We call it celebration,
remembrance,
but forget the cost behind the color.In the house that Washington built,
a petty despot drags his shadow through halls,
demanding fealty not to a flag,
but to his name—
thin-skinned,
thick with vengeance.Pasty cowards
with worn knees
find the floor—
not in protest,
but in pretense—
mouths clenched
like fists too timid to rise,
vows collapsing into ash.Above them,
in a gilt frame among the dead,
Jefferson watches.
He sees them squirm
beneath chandeliers
they dare not rattle.He once wrote of tyrants,
that a man marked by such acts
is unfit to rule a free people.The ink endures,
though the spine has gone slack.And still, above the seated stone
of Lincoln’s gaze
the fireworks rise—
hollow, obedient,
bursting against a sky
that never promised freedom,
only the chance
to fight for it.
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While the Elk Were Moving
To my right,
Longs Peak rises jagged through pine.
To my left,
a wide meadow scattered with boulders—
bones from the old world.Below, a stream elegies the slope,
snowmelt running fast over stone
worn smooth by thaw and thunder.This morning, an elk herd passed through—
massive, deliberate,
moving with the grace of dancers,
as if gravity had chosen to spare them.Not silence,
but the absence of familiar noise.
No voices. No engines.
No signal or screen.Just the wind-clipped scratch of pen on paper,
and a stillness with weight—
the kind that settles like mist on skin,
that hushes thought.In the fragile solitude of mountains,
one can almost forget how the edges burn.Tomorrow I’ll hike back down, return—
to towers, to headlines,
to see what’s become of things—
to see if the center held,
or if, while the elk were moving,
the scaffolding finally collapsed.He deployed Marines to American streets—
maybe that was the tilt.
Maybe not.Days fold behind each other
like stage sets in the dark.Blanket pardons.
Raids without warrants.
Agents at schools,
asking children for names.
Reporters cuffed.
A free press recast as enemy of the people.The Justice Department, a private shield.
Federal hands bending toward one voice—
like sunflowers to heat.He speaks of a third term
the way we speak of death:
a joke, until it isn’t.Warnings come,
dressed in neutral tones:
constitutional crisis,
erosion of norms,
precedent dissolved.But warnings read like museum plaques
once fire has claimed the foundation.At some point, it stops being if—
and the only question left
is whether we’re still watching,
or simply learning to live inside the collapse.
This poem first appeared in The New Verse News. It was adapted from the introduction I wrote for the recent protest poetry collection, Record of Dissent.
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Erasure (The Shore Issue 25)
A bruise soon forgets its fist—
the pick’s cry, swallowed whole.
Absence tunnels through the quiet,
humming a melody half-remembered.Bliss, if it exists,
might be the assassin of agony—
a shadow moving swift
beneath a temple-dark sky-of-mind.When pain dissolves, a ghost is born—
the whisper-thin trace
of a breath-dulled blade
caught behind splintered ribs.Every joy steals from ache,
and borrowed light burns bright enough
to sharpen edges left behind—leaving only the faint shape
of what you once called yours.
This poem was first published in The Shore, Issue 25 – Spring 2025.
I’m grateful to the editors for including this piece.
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The Road Ahead
This year,
the bluebonnets feel like distractions—
a velvet curtain pulled
over something beginning to fray.In the rearview,
she hums with Billie Eilish in her headphones,
her face still round with youth,
but beginning to learn its angles.I worry.
A queer kid in public school,
growing up in a state
that tilts harder
with each new bill.While those at the top
swing hammers at federal protections,
local extremists finally see their opening.She catches me watching.
I smile,
because she makes me proud—
and because that’s the role
I’ve been handed:
polishing a mask of promise
for a future I no longer trust.Inside,
I’m taking notes,
tracking exits,
wondering how fast
the country I once fought for
can forget what it promised.I used to believe in the swing,
that the arc bends back,
that cruelty burns itself out.
Now I’m not so sure.
It feels like we’re circling a drain,
waving Bibles,
burning books,
hiding hate
beneath the language of—She laughs at something I can’t hear.
The sound slices clean through the noise,
bright and real and perfect
in a field already fading.
Hi, friends! I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been busy editing a poetry chapbook that just dropped a few days ago: Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. You can read or download the full collection over at The Chaos Section Poetry Project.
This poem didn’t make it into the chapbook, but it’s cut from the same cloth. I wrote it a few months ago, driving back into the Texas Hill Country with my daughter after visiting family in New Mexico. We traversed the Edwards Plateau, then dropped into the Hill Country, where Austin sprawled ahead. The bluebonnets were blooming and the fields were beautiful, but my mind was elsewhere.
I’d just read an article about anti-LGBTQ legislation targeting public schools here in Texas—can’t even remember which bill, honestly. Around that same time, I saw another headline about the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts that would eliminate funding for the LGBTQ youth suicide prevention hotline. I ended up writing an essay about those cuts, which ran in HuffPost. You can read it here if you’re interested.
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Anti-Authoritarian Poetry Project: Open for Submissions
Hey friends and fellow poets! Just a quick note. I’ve been helping set up a new poetry site, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and we’re currently looking for submissions. The theme is anti-authoritarianism—mostly U.S.-focused, but open to global perspectives too. No payment, just a space for poems that speak to the moment. I know the focus is pretty specific and I don’t want to assume anyone’s politics, but if it resonates with you, feel free to check it out below:
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I Assume There Is Music Hidden in the Silence
Name a thing, and it unravels the moment you speak.
Meaning flickers, hushed at the edge of every breath.
At dawn, a crow-black thread stretches across pale sky,
some echo of a verse, wingstroke-torn, drifting beyond
reach. Once, the horizon was only rumor, slipping across
half-remembered roads; now it gathers our scattered thoughts
like coins in a jar. We’ve always sensed the caves within,
the rolling brine of secret devotions, each one shifting
in time, like a dusk-glow dissolving just beyond the borders
of dream. I assume there is music hidden in the silence,
a quiet chord waiting to unfurl when the last word fades.
This poem was first published in Eunoia Review on April 8th, 2025. I am grateful to the editors for featuring my work.
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Magic Doors
by Phoebe and Nick Allison
Fluffy pink unicorns dance on rainbows
while long-lashed dogs wear flowers like fur.
Soft green Yoda-lights sway overhead,
framing my second-story window
where moonlight spills onto the bed,
silver-casting quiet shadows.I drift,
carried across a calm sea of sleep.At dawn, I wake in a brighter room—
its sharp light hums like a secret.
A blue shark swims
across a storm-tossed whiteboard
before the bed floats gently down
a river of tile.Magic doors open, a deep breath,
and then—nothing.
Quieter than dreams,
deeper than memory.When I surface again,
the curtains sway, soft as whispers,
their patterns slip through the mind-haze.
Family waits, voices steady, smiling
as I slowly return to my body.A kind nurse guides me to the chair.
Its wheels sing toward the elevator,
to the car,
and then,Home.
Whole again,
though I never truly fell apart.
Note: This poem was first published in Issue 3 of Poems for Tomorrow, a poetry and art journal that shares creative work with patients in hospitals and care facilities. Their mission is simple and good: to help people feel connected, loved, and heard during hard moments. They put together anthologies of poems and art that are placed in hospital waiting rooms, senior centers, and long-term care units—places where a little beauty can go a long way.
“Magic Doors” is a chain poem co-written, line for line, with my 11-year-old daughter, Phoebe, during the days surrounding her surgery to repair a severe double fracture in her left forearm. Both the radius and ulna were shattered, and the repair required rods and a full-arm cast. The poem tells her story through the eyes of three rooms: her bedroom the night before, the pre-op room, and the recovery room. It’s about resilience, imagination, and the strange kind of magic that shows up when you’re stuck in a hospital and still trying to feel like yourself. She’s an amazing, kind, empathetic, and creative kid, and I couldn’t be more proud of her.
They also published Phoebe’s original painting, Stargazing Cat on a Beach at Midnight—an acrylic-on-canvas piece she made for her grandfather while he was in the hospital recovering from throat cancer surgery.
Please check out Poems for Tomorrow and support what they’re doing. It’s a genuinely cool and meaningful project.
Stargazing Cat on a Beach at Midnight, acrylic on canvas, by Phoebe Allison 
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Every Victory is a Failure
Taurus is a great big bull—
he watches close in the cold months,
when our part of the planet
leans away
like the sun
is a close-talking strangerOn a bus to Chicago,
I once met a man who said
every victory is a failure
of perspective.
We’re always traveling south,
if we go far enoughWe’re bound to arrive
at the same conclusion.
Timing is the only
uncertainty—
when the clock swims past elevenIt’s time for me to call it a night.
The older I get, the more I see
the appeal in rising with the sun,
following it closely to bedI open the door to a scent—
white chrysanthemums,
the kind usually reserved for funerals
in winter,
but now doing a passable
impression of a daisyon a windowsill,
splitting the north breeze
in two.
Acknowledgment: The first line is borrowed from “No More Poetry” by Wilco.
A beautiful set of lyrics—classic Jeff Tweedy.
Taurus is a great big bull
He hid my heart out in the woods
The heavens move so slow
But I’m quick and goodThere’s a God-shaped hole
Bleeding love up above
And in my heart full of soul
I just can’t seem to get enoughAnd you don’t have to be poor
To hang with me
Cause there’ll be no more
Poetry
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All the Ways Blue Can Be
She’s never been one for weighty words,
but her expressions shine through with clarity,
a language I’ve learned to read
across the room.Her smile sketches the degrees of joy,
her shoulders measure the weight of weariness,
her touch—a whisper of empathy.
And her eyes—eyes that reflect
all the ways blue can be—
mirror shifting moods, fleeting thoughts,
the quiet undercurrents of her heart.A brief window into
the storms and still waters within.
Inspired by the wonderful line “The sky showed me all the ways blue can be and how many clouds it can hold” from Bridgette Tales’ post, Photography: Hit the Road.
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Singing for Strangers
I met a house finch yesterday.
Oddly enough,
we were nowhere near a house.She sang me her song,
weep-weep-sidderee-churr,
and cocked her head,
shot a side-eyed glance,
as if to ask
whether I approved.By the time I stopped debating
if it’s odd to talk to birds,
and offered my compliment,
she was gone—presumably flitting off
to serenade someone less hesitant
to heap praise
on songbirds in busy public parks.
The Truth About Tigers 