The Monster Manufactures Spectacle Lenses The labs discourage CR-39 and I am well past the prime of life: polycarbonate it is ( impact-resistant space shuttle window material ) though I prefer the clarity of Trivex. Victor would have insisted on an ST-28 flat-top bifocal with a low seg height ( I made him an old man prematurely ) though I could have chased him up into the refractive index heights to 1.67 ( 1.74 quickly grows brittle for myopes ). The machine does most the work; I simply mount the block and melt it to the guide aligning the ocular center, and set the edger: before too long a bevel forms and we’re in business. Coatings exist on their own spectrum—anti-reflective ( not anti-glare, not anti-scratch, not anti-dirt ) a little smudgier although it does wick dust. If we were cutting high-end polarized lenses there’d be rare earth elements enhancing your eye ( neodymium, erbium, and praseodymium, respectively ) but let’s keep it simple: spheres measured in diopters, cylindrical astigmatism dictating axes, progressives with their corridor-induced prism and internal etchings poised to distort your periphery, a type of tunnel vision on your face, not built in, but close.
The Monster Checks His Watch He seems happy just to have one fit his wrist—this trivial thing, more want than need, so utterly disposable. What simplicity. What sophistication. Oh eight hundred hours projected as two LED hands, a silent resonance beneath it all: Cesium-133 oscillating at 9,912,631,770 cycles per second, every atom singing the same frequency (that’s what makes it so precise). This one is always on. It dims when left alone, but with a lift or a flick of the wrist it resurges in answer to the stranger’s age-old question. After Victor died, he left the family home in ashes, ripped the wall clock from its perch— a green Neuchâtelois from La Chaux-de-Fonds— memento mori for immortal “man”, its white enamel dial dead at three to three, fragile metal hands at rest on III and just past XI. How many time pieces does he own? Two hundred years counting humanity’s construction on a wound device that ticks, still here despite so many revolutions.
From the Author: Frankenstein is my favorite book in the world, and I love how we humans make ourselves monstrous by using wearable technology to bind the world around us, expand/enhance our physical abilities, and stave off our natural decay. So many of the devices we use appear simple on the surface but seethe with complexity upon closer inspection (which can also be said about people and poems). In these poems, I imagine Frankenstein’s monster surviving to present day and developing a strong connection to the myriad miraculous things humans create and then ignore.
Calvin Olsen is a writer and translator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds an MFA from Boston University and is currently a PhD candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State. His work has most recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Carve, Poetry Scotland, and World Literature Today. More work can be found at calvin-olsen.com.
