Food for Powder

Second billing under Sherlock,
Something like a free-rider gene
In the darkness of DNA

Among husks of torn viruses,
Stories and narrative fragments
Caught up in the machinery

Milling generations ago,
What were you all about? Tut, tut.
What did you do for your author

Who finished you, saw you in print,
And maybe hoped for what? Readers?
Fame? Enough money for dinner?

Surely not this reproduction
By such an unthinkable means
And still only second billing

On a cover with an image
Of the primary narrative
Nothing at all to do with it.