The Nightmare Collector is a poem written by Bruce Boston. It was first published in the magazine Night Cry, Spring 1987. It was reprinted in the 1988 collection The Nightmare Collector, in The 1988 Rhysling Anthology, in the 1997 anthology Nebula Awards 24, in the magazine The Zone #1, Summer 1994, in the 1995 collection Sensuous Debris: Selected Poems 1970-1995, in the 2001 collection Quanta, in the 2005 anthology The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, edited by Mike Allen and Roger Dutcher, in the 2008 collection The Nightmare Collection, and in the 2016 collection Brief Encounters with My Third Eye: Selected Short Poems 1975-2016.
The poem won the 1988 Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem.