A Solution to Illiteracy

Pope Boniface VIII made it illegal to boil the bones
of any man who had died abroad, so during his criminal
papacy, all corpses had to be carried intact, or in bloody pieces
from whatever holy battlefield they met their end.

Anatomists of the day had to make their drawings of bones
of skeletons from the burnt or impaled corpses of criminals
interred above ground as a warning to their countrymen, pieces
ripped clean from their dangling corpses, of what sort of end

waits for dissenters, an end written in the lengths of exposed white bone
in the scattered pieces of criminals left at the crossroads leading out of town.

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Holly Day's writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal, and her hobbies include kicking and screaming at vending machines.