Poems and photographs by Alexis Rhone Fancher Publisher: MacQ Release date: 15 January 2026 ISBN: 979-8-3495-7020-9 6x9 inches // 44 pages

MacQ, 15 January 2026

I am in awe of this towering new work: Sinkhole by Alexis Rhone Fancher. The poems in this book invite the reader into the personal/collective crucible of the grieving body where love and loss transmute into something emotionally and psychically new. The poet accomplishes this through masterful verse with devastating honesty.

I’ll beat this cancer, she tells me, 
her long curly hair a halo. 
Yes, I lie. Of course you will. 
She looks beautiful, defiant. Alive.

The book is hauntingly beautiful, an amazing piece of writing on all levels. I will return to this book many times. There are tears on the pages—some from the author—some will be mine.

Do I have a sister? she asks on repeat. 
Her memory is locked up inside her. 
Our sisterhood erased, like we’d never met. 
I’m speechless. Bereft. 

The pantoum is a Malaysian form that requires a scholarly yet interpretive approach to work with the English linguistic. The superb technical skill this takes—the art of poetry if you will—is on full display in these poems.

Sinkhole is both a literary as well as somatic masterpiece in which we are reminded the greater our love for one another the harder it is to say goodbye—we grieve for the dead in an ancient place in the body. This is a book of enormous humanity.

Nothing will ever be right again. 
There’s no comfort; not for me. 
My sister took it with her. 
I don’t know what to do. 

Gary Lemons

has been an ironworker, carpenter, tree planter, logger, crane operator, fruit picker, documentary videographer, and arts educator. He is the author of nine collections of poetry including most recently Book of Spells (Red Hen Press, 2025), and his series, the Snake Quartet. His poems have been published widely in literary journals, including Iowa Review, Kayak, Paris Review, and Willow Springs, anthologized in Dalmo’ma, and recorded on the CD Arisen. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where he manages PTTV, the community television station.