Home » Poems » Best » Nicole Perkins » Best Nicole Perkins Poems

Best Poems Written by Nicole Perkins

Below are the all-time best Nicole Perkins poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

Elegy On Rt 9

Proteus beneath our wheels,
shapeshifting God of the Underworld hungers,
longing for music as laughter,
stars that sparkle in young eyes.
He takes what Hebe gifts, 
lacking such grace Himself.
Wheels pass:
Proteus sleeps, 
sated until the next passing,
waking with a song to feed again.

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

Mother's Stories

I warned you about Mother telling her stories.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

I warned you about the magic
of golem and djinn,
about lilac walks 
and mysterious circuses.
Stranded mice,
abandoned mice,
runaway mice,
unexceptional princesses,
all fodder for the worst sort of daydreaming.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

Sisters telling stories in bird language
as they browse bookstores in Paris
and tapestries of tales 
told by women who are unicorns
invite all sorts of imaginings,
nothing practical,
all frivolous flights of fancy.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

Leave Avalon to lie in the mist,
allow the city of chains
to fall into the abyss,
let wolf-women run 
through Rome’s seven hills alone.
Close your ears to Mother’s stories,
cover your eyes so you aren’t ensnared 
by the magic of gesture. 
Let the story end,
leave the queen encased in crystal
and the flower-maiden weeping
in underground halls;
don’t send the children out
to peek under toadstool and 
fern forests for wee wicked folk.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

Tell them no,
you’ll not hear the hoofbeats
as the horseman stalks the village,
rabbits don’t wear watches,
mermaids don’t dance,
fillies don’t fly.
Tell the children no,
abandoned princesses don’t wear crowns of stars,
maids don’t marry monsters
in return for a single rose,
they don’t marry the north wind,
they don’t spin dynasties
on outlawed spinning wheels.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

See what comes of Mother’s stories:
the children run wild through the wood 
seeking musical menageries,
they wade into seaside caves
singing for selkies.
They ask for tales told 
by orphaned princesses 
hiding in palace gardens
and songs sung by shieldmaidens.
They want stories 
of women made of glass
and sagas sung by lionesses,
princesses who save miners’ sons 
and princesses who save themselves.
I warned you,
but you wouldn’t listen.

No good will come of Mother’s stories,
I said,
and now all is topsy-turvy
and the children have run off
to the goblin market.

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

To Be a Flower Is Profound Responsibility

Your smile to
me is sunlight. I want to be
in your light, breathing in your presence like a
disciple; I will lay a flower
on the altar of your heart. It is
a paltry offering for so profound
a love. I am made weak by you; you must claim responsibility.




Inspired by Emily Dickinson

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

Twenty-Four Miles On a Rainy Morning

I began a poem this morning
driving in the rain.
I turned the radio off,
not interested in voices.
I repeated the lines to myself,
but I was driving
and it slipped away in curious, strange whispers.

I wanted to tell of the sound
the tires made on the wet road, 
the tapping patter of the rain on the roof,
the thousand drops 
scattered on the windshield
like seeds on a strawberry.
Cows stood in a field, 
patient under their wet hides.

I was driving,
fifteen miles behind me,
nine ahead, 
so I couldn't write how the low gray clouds
curved around the mountains
like the hand of an all-mighty being,
or how the leafless birches
glowed
against their somber cousins the pines.

Slowing, cruising down Exit 1,
downtown Brattleboro teeming with traffic
even at this early hour.
I wonder if other drivers
turned off the radio,
listened to the hushing slur of tires on the wet road
and tapped the rain's rhythm
against the steering wheel.

Driving past the hospital, 
past the Meadows,
stippled and gray, 
still but for the pattern of the rain on the surface.
Park the car, climb the stairs
listening to a quiet concert of birdsong
and rain on last year's fallen leaves
regretting that the drive is over
and the workday begun.

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

A Requiem For the Dovekeepers

A Requiem for the Dovekeepers

We went walking through the orchard, toward terraces where ancient olive trees and huge, twisted grapevines grew.
The birds were cooing. I felt a pulse in my throat, remembering how I had waited for my prey in the wilderness, how they had come to me and how I had destroyed them.
He vowed that the color of my hair was shared by all the most beautiful women in his land and, he added slyly, in mine.
I recognized Ashtoreth, the mother and warrior, whose presence has been long outlawed.
Chayei ‘olam le-‘olam. Eternal life, forever.
Sometimes people imagine I am crying, they believe they’ve spied a tear, but they’re wrong.
I now understood it was our duty as human beings to see behind the veil to the inside of the world, to the heart of things.
I wished to be forgiven.


(Lines taken from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman,
Pages 83; 92; 130; 157; 220; 242; 289; 377)

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

Cosmos

A small blue world
		sits in my palm,
		perfect.
		I don’t know why,
		but I am sad.
		It marked me
		somehow,
		that small world,
		seeded with hopes of
		future worlds
		and new cycles
		of life.

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

You Don'T Have To Be Awake To Feel the Night Change

We meet, we talk, but I don’t know you.
Your eyes a flash of blue, bits of sky. I don’t
know how it came to be yours, the sky. Do you have
magic, that you command the very elements to
your being? I would like to be 
yours as well. In the night’s deep quiet we will lie awake
and you will rename the stars, build new constellations to
fill me with awe and reverence. How safe I will feel
in your arms, by your side, whenever you say my name. The
monsters will cower, dazzled by your sky eyes shining so bright in the night.
As our seasons turn, will your skies change?




Inspired by New Year’s Morning by Elmaz Abi-Nadir

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

She Knows

The touch of silver, cold, uninvited 
marked a circle of blame on her glass skin.
Her happiness is a song, regal in locked throats.

Peace tries to heal hatred’s reign
but cemeteries continue to grow, curving
around thousand-year-old pines jeweled in amber tears.
Hope warrants less and less in centuries of pain 
as we are taken on a chase, as we are taken in…

Her open hands trace ideas of law  
across icy flesh—the dead tell no more tales, 
not even to her.

Locked in the last keep, 
(for her safety, they tell her)
she sings a song
of unforgivable love and unlearned fidelity.

Next time 
(she knows this, but won’t say it, because that would be wrong)
the war may not end.

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

Do I Love You

When you asked me do
I love you, I
smiled and asked you what is love,
and how could I possibly offer it to anyone but you?


Inspired by The Sunken Ship by Salma Khadra Jayyusi

Details | Nicole Perkins Poem

We Share One Apple and Innumerable Dreams

At some point you and I became we,
my hopes became yours to share.
When did I realize we would become one?
Was it that spring, when the trees were pink with apple
blossoms and songbirds darted among the reeds and 
we walked by the river speaking innumerable
sentences and you held my hand and told me your dreams?



Inspired by Two Little Girls by Fawziyya Abu-Khalid