Q: In What City Does Your Mother Live

In which she wears the jeweled shell
sometimes called the scarab beetle
who colors its walled castle bloody.
She wears the scarab Monday
when she drinks back fat white pills.
She wears it Tuesday when she falls.
She wears the scarab Wednesday
with the shredded lips that pray
to only swallow, turning blue. Thursday
with the angry morphine. She will try
to talk again on Friday, not to be asleep.
Saturday they wash with oil and soap.
For all that, Sunday is the law. Sunday
in her castle, folded wings and walls.