Paper Cup, by Logan McDermott-Mostowy

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Paper Cup is a somatic poetry project that probes medical trauma through the lens of linguistic deconstruction. Braiding memory, allusion, and hallucination, these poems confine the reader to the claustrophobic sterility of a psychiatric ward. Paper Cup explores how the disarticulation of body, mind, and spirit under coercive care structures can alter a medical subject’s relationship to language.

In this project, Logan McDermott-Mostowy draws inspiration from literary, mythological, and folkloric touchstones, locating mad trans meaning-making within a broader framework of intellectual and spiritual heritage. Despite such theoretical concerns, Paper Cup remains rooted in the poet’s own encounters with institutionalization. The poems included in Paper Cup are driven by jagged, immediate imagery and an underlying desire to heal and grow through language.

Logan McDermott-Mostowy is a writer and educator from Washington, DC. His poetry has appeared in publications from Lilac Peril and Quillkeepers Press, and his fictional debut was recently published in The Esthetic Apostle. Logan was a 2025 resident at Sundress Academy of the Arts in Knoxville, TN. He is the editor of Transatlantiques, the French-language literary journal of the Alliance Française de Washington, DC. Logan lives with his partner in Seattle, WA.