First Place – 2026 James H. Nash Contest

“‘Now I am Playing the Part of a Boy’ surprised me from line to line with the way it makes the receiving of a crab into a strange circus-like performance. The narrator’s emotionless affect allows the reader to have their own experience as spectator as the drama unfolds, rather than being directed how to feel through more expected lyrical means. The crab, which used to ‘bloodmoon’ and ‘orbit on the seafloor’ in its own world has, since being caught, become an ‘it’ in multiple sentences throughout the poem. In the action of the poem, the way bodies and body parts (the stranger, the role of the boy, a leg, a funny face, the crab, a back, the role of a hand) poem transfer attention and energy to one another creates a kind of awkward dance, or a witch’s spell with odd ingredients added out of order. The recipe is leading to an undignified execution. The way the last few lines introduce ‘refusal’ and ‘reflex’ keep the crab’s body on the stage of the poem without melodrama or sadism.”

Sun Yung Shin, 2026 Nash Contest Judge

NOW I AM PLAYING THE PART OF A BOY

by MARC-ANTHONY VALLE

who can kill but cannot catch. Can kill
the crustacean. But cannot take it from
where it, bloodmooning, made
its orbit on the seafloor. It is given
to me by a stranger who plays the part
of a sportsman tired of killing. He only has
two lines. He asks to take
my picture in exchange for the crab. I hold
it by one leg, looking like the Jack of Hearts.
He tells me to make a funny face. But I am playing
the part of a boy who can kill but cannot catch, and I do
not make funny faces. I practice my lines in the car.
I arrive home off book. I remove the crab
from the livewell and lay it on its back. It is now
playing the part of a hand. Its fingers fumble in the air
like it is trying to palm a basketball. I tip the long knife into a crease
in its chestplate. Thin as scrim. I force my
knife in and down and into and
it refuses to still into a crescent. Its waning reflex.
It must be reflex. Reflex like a shiver
I can’t explain without a folktale. Someone
has walked over where my grave will be,
someone has said my name from far away.

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MARC-ANTHONY VALLE is a Mixed-Black poet from the Pacific Northwest. He received his MFA from WashU. Marc-Anthony was selected as the runner-up by Monica Ferrell for Tupelo Press’ 2024 Snowbound Chapbook Award, and a scholarship participant to DISQUIET International’s 2026 workshop in Lisbon. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, swamp pink, Pembroke Magazine, Notre Dame Review, The Hopkins Review, Bat City Review, Cape Cod Review, Frozen Sea, and elsewhere. You can find him at marc-anthony.net.