Courttney Cooper

Courttney Cooper has a one-man show at PAC Gallery in Walnut Hills opening April 15, 2011.  I wrote this poem about Courttney's work in 2007.  He is an amazing artist and human being... (Keith Banner)

Courttney Cooper


A map of a city
Nobody else can see,
Lines drawn with ball-point pens
Bought at a drug-store on the way home.
The paper gets picked up off the ground.

His brain needs those buildings.

Every neighborhood is revealed,
Every piece of river,
Every street-corner
Like an eyelash trapped on a fingertip.

His architecture devours
All the words we use.  Every moment
Is a rafter, every window
A hymn.
All door knobs are
A reason to exist.

Grocery carts lined up in the rain
Are like numbers in a phonebook
Only shinier
And more useful.

The bones in his hand
create this
Utopia,

The one place
he must get to.