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Bez Reviews Independent Books #19: Transmasc Marvel Girl

[This intro has been updated due to the changes to itch.io’s content guidelines.]

Hey everyone! I wanna do little reviews/writeups for the independently-published books, and so, here I am. I want to review one book every month or two (or quicker, if I’m lucky); it’ll get me reading more, and get authors who often go without feedback some thoughts on their work! I think it’ll be cool for everyone!

I used to require that your books be hosted on itch.io, and while I do prefer that, their crackdown on adult content (which I think is bullshit, and has personally affected my work as well) makes it impossible for many of your stories to have a home there. I would prefer that your book isn’t solely hosted on Amazon, but the only requirement is that no part of your book uses AI at all. I want to see your stories, especially the fucked up shit that places like itch.io will no longer allow!

Feel free to get in touch with me with your books—I’m @NorbezJones on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Bluesky, Pillowfort, Threads, Instagram, Tumblr, and Discord.

Looking forward to seeing your books! <3

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One more announcement before the review: I am looking for books to review for BPD Awareness Month in May! If you are an author with BPD, especially if you talk about it in your fiction, I would love to hear from you! Readers, feel free to also share recommendations!

With that, onto the review!

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Warning: The following subjects come up in this review: sexuality, masturbation, mental healthcare, transphobia, & gender dysphoria.

Recently, I reviewed Like Blood On A Dog’s Teeth, a poetry collection from kith books, an indie publishing house I’ve had my eye on for quite a while. When I emailed founding editor wim to let them know the review was up, I asked in the postscript (that’s what P.S. stands for if you didn’t know) if I could be on the review team for two upcoming releases: Transmasc Marvel Girl by sterling-elizabeth arcadia, and Multimorbid by Rebecca Wood. I wasn’t sure how they’d respond, but to my delight, wim said they’d be happy to send both to me once they were available! So here we are with Transmasc Marvel Girl, a poetry collection about life & transition through the lens of various movies.

The chapbook is summarized thusly on kith’s website:

In a fantastic inversion of escapism, sterling-elizabeth arcadia’s Transmasc Marvel Girl puts contemporary film in the crossroads of love, transition, and, reproduction, not only as an artifact of our culture, but as a lens through which she demonstrates looking at her own life. From sci-fi juggernauts like the Alien franchise or Terminator (1984), to queer indie films like I Saw the TV Glow (2024) and All of Us Strangers (2023), arcadia carefully disassembles films and reassembles them in her own likeness. Or, she takes an embroidery needle directly to the silver screen, where she writes life as a trans woman both above and beneath the projection. Wrestling with heartbreak, madness, gender, sexuality, and reproductive politics as a gender non-conforming trans woman, and with special attention to the prose poem form, arcadia renders a scene—traversing the landscapes of interiority and embodiment—as striking as any of Roger Deakins’ cinematography. For arcadia’s speaker, life is as much a struggle with oneself as it is with a transphobic, misogynistic world.

I also received a physical copy, so that means I’ll be playing a bookmark RPG with it! Please look forward to that appendix later on.

The book made me quite reflective, and sparked my creative spirit—or rather my very self-conscious inner poet (as I don’t consider myself good at poetry). And what better way to respond to a poetry book but with poems of my own? So, that is what I’ll do. We’ll start with an opening poem, and then, this will be split into numbered sections that respond to the correlating numbered sections of the book. Some are more analysis-focused, and others are more reflective in nature; the goal is to discuss the book by imitating its style. As I think my poetry is shit, my brain thinks it’s a bad idea to release this, which for me is a sign I need to do so anyway. Enjoy!

Note: all of the poems in this section (aside from "the pink opaque") are named after movies I saw while in mental health facilities for pseudo-dementia. More on that in the 2nd part. If you want to learn about my journey during that time, you can do so through this game I made about it.

knock at the cabin (2023)

the opening poem of the book

calls itself a sonnet. it is not one.

are there sonnets that are more than

fourteen lines? that have no

rhyme scheme? am I just

unaware of the newest

mutations/trends/evolutions

a sonnet takes?

ignoring that formatting issue, it's a

strong start. lights going dim

before the movie begins.

previews of the book's content,

unrated by the mpaa.

we see that this is a book about

transness & gender, contained

in the four corners of a movie screen.

the title alludes me. arcadia

takes estrogen as HRT, so

doesn't that make her transfemme?

maybe there are definitions for

transmasculinity beyond what

i'm aware of.

(I'm agender & transmasc, if you didn't know.)

i assume if

i was more attuned to arcadia's

gender journey, i would understand.

well, i suppose that's what the book is for!

ONE

the menu (2022)

a familiar figure from other

poetry collections i've reviewed appears:

the eponymous "you". we see them

before arcadia met them (in the Arrival [2016]

poem "weapon opens time") & afterwards

(in "after la chimera"). they appear

to be an ex-lover, based on those poems

and ones in other sections.

in this part, we see this person

in relation to arcadia's body. the whole

section (& book) is about

her relationship to her body

and how that body relates to others,

from holding another's hand

to choking on her own tongue,

to quote "having [a penis]

at the wrong time

with the wrong person."

(by the way, don't ask me

what the redacted words are

in the "minor surgeries" poem.

i have no idea.

i have read it repeatedly

but am no closer to figuring it out.)

the pink opaque

"the ants" is my favorite poem of the section

by far, its titular creatures

starting on a fallen sugary treat

and revealed to have been felt everywhere

quote "since you left" endquote. it's one of

two poems on the movie I Saw The TV Glow,

and is the superior of the two to me.

i'm trans. I Saw The TV Glow should be

a masterpiece to me, or something like that.

But when I watched it, it didn't

click. i should GET IT, for

fuck's sake. why don't i

GET IT, why did i walk away from it

wondering where the rest of the movie was?

i had seen so much discussion on

how it captured the trans experience,

so i expected to see piece of my life

on screen, bottled up, leaking out.

but i only saw vague traces

of a ghost of me who didn't exist--

not enough of her. i wanted the movie

to summon that spirit fully to my house

for an exorcism.

all this to say, "the ants"

GETS IT; it captures that spirit, the

itch of creatures crawling under your skin

fighting to get out.

TWO

love & thunder (2022)

section two contains prose poems that are, for the most part, contained in one long paragraph. arcadia watches a movies in a theater, and then writes a poem for the movie. the mentions of cherry hill & voorhees makes me wonder if is a jersey girl, like i used to be (or technically maybe never was?). my favorite one is easily "i am normal and can be trusted with an empty movie theater", because of its (1) strong opener, and (2) exploration of sexuality that ties the piece together. i like this part better than part one because there's a throughline, time slowly passing--it ties everything together, makes every piece cohesive. there's a clear structure here: arcadia talks about her journey to seeing the movie at whichever theater she's seeing it at, and interspersed in that timeline are related & unrelated thoughts. it somehow ties together nicely. maybe it pleases my adhd brain to see someone else who also sees timelines as not lines, but webs, each minute connecting to a different strand.

smile (2022)

the time in my life when I saw the most movies was during what I call my "pseudo-dementia era", in recovery for mental health causing dementia-like symptoms in my brain. at the mental health program, we would have an activity every week, and usually that activity was going to the movies. that's when i saw the first smile movie, and it had a huge impact on my life, blew my mind. early on, the mental health people would get all of us popcorn and a drink. months later, when all of the therapists walked out and the whole program got shaken up, they said they didn't have the budget to get us snacks anymore. we never learned why all of the therapists left; the only explanation i got when I pressed the head of the program (rebecca) about it was, "some people are just resistant to change." rebecca sucked by the way; when one of the housing staff screamed transphobic shit at me, her reaction to my recording of it was to say that recording in an empty car somehow violated hipaa, and that staff member was never really punished. rebecca deserves a visit from the smile movie's monster, who the crew of the movie called lollipop. yeah, lollipop would fuck her shit up.

nope (2022)

relationships and sexuality are big topics in arcadia's poems, in case you couldn't tell by the poem I mentioned about masturbating in a theater (which is not the only poem about that subject). most of these are arcadia's relationships, mostly her ex and the fallout of that breakup, but there are also meet-cutes to be found. the most interesting one to me is "national anthem (2024), which is about arcadia's brother finally leaving a relationship she's been "worried about since 2019". through that event and the film she's watching, arcadia reflects on her romantic behaviors, being part of the queer community, and jealous assholes. i think it's natural for the things other people go through causing you to reflect on your own history, ponder your past. media & movies are a reflection of someone, even if a distorted one, maybe of you or maybe of someone else.

THREE

violent night (2022)

the third part has some free verse poems, and a few prose poems. the theme here shifts from sexuality to pregnancy--despite (or perhaps because of) being an antinatalist (a term I had to look up), it's something arcadia thinks about a great deal. we open with a poem about how society treats fat people vs pregnant people: quote, "do we just treat [pregnant people] like skinny people with a temporary fat problem[?]" i listen to a lot of reddit stories on youtube, and the amount of times i've heard stories of husbands falling out of love with their wives because they gained weight while pregnant should be criminal. the one that sticks out to me most is the guy whose wife's feet grew while pregnant, so she bought some new shoes for herself, but he threw them away. he was convinced she could lose the weight and get her original shoe size back, and she was just "being lazy" by getting new shoes. hearing stories like that definitely makes arcadia's antinatalist stance make sense tbh.

FOUR

circle (2015)

there's only one poem

in this section, made of

short lines of free verse

with familiar topics:

arcada's ex, and people fucking.

we see an event

mentioned in part 2,

brought back: arcadia

having sexy times

with her ex while

they were in zoom class.

here, arcadia reflects

on the relationship

through the 2024 film

high tide.

one thing that comes up:

being in each other's poetry

while together. that's

gotta sting after the fact,

knowing a version of you two

that was happy together

is permanently in print somewhere.

i have old pieces i made

that i cringe looking back at,

but not in that way. i've

only been in one relationship,

and that was seven years ago.

i'm in no rush to

get my heart broken again;

i'm ace and pretty aro anyway,

so i don't feel like i'm

missing out.

the end of the poem

alludes me. being inside

of someone, and them in you,

forever? sounds like a

fancy way of saying 69ing.

in all seriousness, i get it.

to be in someone is to

be with them in that moment,

to be each other's objects

of affection, with no one

else and nothing else

mattering but you two.

it's an interesting note

to end on.

once you detach,

you're the last one standing.

Conclusion

So there we have it! To summarize, Transmasc Marvel Girl is an interesting little time capsule whose events are framed by various movies. I appreciated my time with it quite a bit.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can get it it physically here, and digitally here! I am not financially sponsored and do not earn money from your purchase.

That’s all for now! Please look forward to the bookmark RPG appendix later on! My next proper review will be starting off the BPD Awareness Month book blogs.

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