This chapter argues that twenty-first-century poetry, notably by Port-au-Prince-based poets takes up the vexed theorization of contemporary Haitian public life, deploying and recuperating the centuries-old knowledge of the Vodou lwa Papa Loko and his avatars (the butterfly and the wind). The chapter considers poet and writer James Noël’s challenge to readers of contemporary Haitian poetry to grapple with the troubling quotidian realities of present-day Haitian civil society. In particular, I examine the fugacity of what I refer to as Lokoian ethics as a means of, first, advocating for an ethos of the non-predatory through an ecocritical analysis of the butterfly (in contrast with the dragonfly); and, second, decoupling the binary of staying/leaving, debunking the longstanding debate over whether staying or leaving Haiti is ‘better’ for the country, for one’s family, for one’s own future. In particular, the chapter works with the poetry of James Noël and Lyonel Trouillot, putting them into conversation with poetry by Getro Bernabé, Georges Castera, and Ida Faubert.