Lepidoptera: after Lorette, by John Robert Lee

I Understand Your Loneliness, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada). 2016.

Lepidoptera: after Lorette​

                                                                                      of course, each life matters
                                                                            the embryonic and the homeless
                                                                     those lost to themselves in muttering

frenzies of precipitous days
the rubble-shrouded children of Aleppo
crucified saints of Sudan

coke-heads of Manila, and also,
the trans-gendered below Kingston’s ghettos --
but these gone lives I particularly know:

young Trayvon, breath-stopped Eric, distraught
Sandra Bland, many who should be living now --
and somewhere, in a civilized, suburban basement,

this child also, among the lepidopterist’s cases
collecting nightmares in the formaldehyde
of an old man’s lusts --

                                                                     pinned to this daguerreotype of a sketch,
                                                                                                 she matters, she matters

​John Robert Lee

JOHN ROBERT LEE (b. St. Lucia 1948) has published several collections of poetry. His short stories and poems have been widely anthologised. His reviews and columns have appeared with regularity in newspapers, local and regional. He has also produced and presented radio and television programmes in St. Lucia for many years. His books include Saint Lucian (1988), Artefacts (2000),Canticles (2007), Elemental (2008), Sighting (2013), City Remembrances (2016). He compiled and edited Roseau Valley and other poems for Brother George Odlum (2003), Bibliography of Saint Lucian Creative Writing 1948-2013 (2013); he co-edited Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews (2006) with fellow St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte and co-edited Sent Lisi: poems and art of Saint Lucia (2014) with Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King and Vladimir Lucien.