Susan Cummins Miller

Tucson writer SUSAN CUMMINS MILLER is the award-winning author of the poetry collections, MAKING SILENT STONES SING and DECIPHERING THE DESERT; six Frankie MacFarlane, Geologist, mysteries; MY BONNEY LIES UNDER: a Keridec Rees historical mystery; and the nonfiction anthology A SWEET, SEPARATE INTIMACY. Her recent short fiction and poems appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Blue Guitar Magazine, and the anthologies Trouble in Tucson; SoWest: Danger Awaits! and Winter in America (Again).

“Just beyond the Road’s Edge,” “Listen to the Desert,”and “Echoes of Falling Water”

Just beyond the road’s edge
in the country of black-eyed Susans
and Russian thistle—

just beyond the crumbling line
where asphalt stops and washboard
gravel begins—just beyond the turnoff

“The Magic Hours: Tucson Mountains,” “Lacuna,” and “Cenzontle”

The universe lurks
in the magic of the hours:
the evening sun slides behind
the ruins of an old stone house

and the cholla thicket, strewn
with the wreckage of windblown leavings—

“Scars,” “Crossing the San Andreas Fault Zone” and “Old Souls Singing in the Chiricahuas”

Traces—faint or bold, visible, or not—left by scalpel, scandal, scurrilous tongues, the scalding steam from a cast-iron kettle, the scolding tones in a mother’s voice, the screams of a child scared straight.

“Making Silent Stones Speak,” “Cracking the Code” and “When Jeannette MacDonald Reigned in the Kitchen”

Picture Rocks Canyon: Paisley
scarlet bandana caught on gray thornbush
sprouting from naked rock. Lavender-
blooming ironwood, swift
zebra-tailed lizards and always
the cactus wrens for company.