"Kvasir's Guide to the Galaxy"

Aboard the Vogon ship,
     Ford Prefect
hands out towels
          to Arthur Dent
          and Kvasir the Wise.

     “I cannot use towels,”
          says Kvasir.
     “For I am made of spit.”

“Er . . . what?”
     says Arthur.

Ford retrieves
     Kvasir’s towel.
“Space travel,”
     he warns the others,
“is unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“Like being
     murdered
          by dwarves,
having your bodily fluids
     drained
          into a cask,
     honeyed
          into a fine mead,
     poured
          into mugs,
passed around and
     consumed?
That kind of being drunk?”
     asks Kvasir.

     Ford ponders.
“Yes.”

“I am comfortable with that.”

“Er . . . what?”
     says Arthur
     as the universe
          turns inside-out.

Greg R. Fishbone
June 2020