Joseph Dante

On the Playing Field

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2026: VOL. 41.

Boys were sentinels of gravel and turf,
legs tearing up miles for sun-faded ribbons,
a howling species with little to say.

The girls wore their scars like I wore
my piebald birthmark: in secret, shared
only between turns at the jump rope.

I could catch and do double-dutch, but couldn’t run
without the whispers. I shared only so much
before spinning myself into someone else’s story.

The boys hardened into bodies
I saw as weapons—rapier, claymore, cutlass—
sharpened on me and never with me,
my edges withdrawing into sheaths.

Girls could never lower their shields
and I recognized the wars raising this defense,
the moat they kept full of flowers

straight as pikes, terrifying in their symmetry.
I had to scrap for my softness,
keep the daggers silked under my tongue
and the oleander close to the vein.

With the walls fortified, the boys and girls
found their formations. Sought their targets. Simple
desire raised them, bequeathed them armor.

Not knowing where to look, I eyed the skies.
I fed the air my arrows, the sharp dawn of blues,
nursing the yearnings I couldn’t yet name.

𐫱𐫱𐫱

Joseph Dante is a writer and instructor from South Florida. He received his MFA from Florida Atlantic University, where he currently teaches and helps direct the university's writing center. His writing has previously appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Salamander, Permafrost, and other publications. He lives with his husband and three cats.