{"id":1520,"date":"2020-07-24T22:06:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T22:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/?page_id=1520"},"modified":"2020-08-01T08:07:48","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T08:07:48","slug":"jose-a-alcantara","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/jose-a-alcantara\/","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 A. Alc\u00e1ntara"},"content":{"rendered":"
Park Ranger<\/h5>\n

I would like to be a shrinking violet-
\ngreen swallow darting out over the Black
\nCanyon of the Gunnison, nothing below me
\nbut two-thousand feet of shaded granite,
\nroiling water, gravity. In this immensity,
\nI am a speck gobbling lesser specks.
\nHumans watch me from the overlooks\u2014
\nDragon Point, Chasm View, The Narrows.
\nThey delight in my acrobatics, in my singing.
\nThey follow me with their eyes, as long
\nas they can. From smallness, I get smaller
\nand smaller, until I disappear\u2014a nothingness
\namong cliffs. They turn and go back to their cars,
\ntheir towns, their cities. I remain, preserving
\nthe infinite, one wingbeat at a time.<\/p>\n

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs<\/h5>\n

I ride my forgotten bike on the forgotten path,
\nsteering between winding cracks, rolling over
\nhorizontal gaps green with grass, slaloming
\nbetween piles of elk scat. I clip a gate,
\nsending a few pellets flying. It\u2019s a Tuesday.
\n11 AM. I have no job. Though to be fair,
\nI\u2019m overemployed as it is, what with the lichens
\nI need to speak with later, and the butterflies
\nseeking my counsel. There\u2019s only so much
\none man can do. I need to hire an assistant,
\nsomeone to organize the pine cones
\nwhen I\u2019m up to my ears in clouds.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Jos\u00e9 A. Alc\u00e1ntara<\/span> lives in western Colorado. He has worked as a bookseller, mailman, commercial fisherman, baker, carpenter, studio photographer, door-to-door salesman, and math teacher. His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily<\/em>, The Southern Review<\/em>, Beloit Poetry Journal<\/em>, Spillway<\/em>, Rattle<\/em>, RHINO<\/em>, The American Journal of Poetry<\/em>, and the anthologies, 99 Poems for the 99%<\/em>, and America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience<\/em>. The Bitten World<\/em>, his first poetry collection, is forthcoming from Tebot Bach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Park Ranger I would like to be a shrinking violet- green swallow darting out over the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, nothing below me but two-thousand feet of shaded granite, roiling water, gravity. In this immensity, I am a speck gobbling lesser specks. Humans watch me from the overlooks\u2014 Dragon Point, Chasm View, The Narrows. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Jos\u00e9 A. Alc\u00e1ntara”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1520","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1520\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}