Susan Cummins Miller

Tucson writer SUSAN CUMMINS MILLER, a former field geologist and college instructor, has published six novels and an anthology containing the works of 34 women writers of the American frontier. Her poems, short stories, and essays appear frequently in journals and anthologies, including the forthcoming Without a Doubt: poems illustrating faith and So West: Love Kills. Two poetry collections, Making Silent Stones Sing and Deciphering the Desert: a book of poems, are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (2022; 2023).

“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.
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