From Writing Notebook 2021, published in 2022.
Acorns
The man with the cold gray eyes
explained the paperwork
hand moving in the slow
exaggerated
gestures
that showed he was
wearied
by the limited understanding
of all women
specifically me
The cold gray eyes
took in my yellow linen sheath dress
too bright too informal for business
my black patent-leather pocketbook
not respectful of large sums of money.
I saw his mouth tighten.
But the flow of things was always in my direction.
Remember that when I tell you
he spoke to me in a heavy patient voice
like God
explaining acorns
to a squirrel
sitting atop a pile
of acorns
2/2/21
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I remember this one vividly. Exactly like. (K)
Sometimes I think this scenario is embedded in everyday life and will never be extracted. This is why I want to go to another planet in my next life, the one that makes sense.
This one certainly does not. But I have a fondness for nonsense in the right context.
The last stanza is a punch in the gut after the previous slaps in the face. I remember interviewing for jobs right after getting married – this is a fine description of the process…
Yes, you have reminded me of job interview I went on as I left college and then it made me think of how often I’ve been talked down to by certain people in certain situations all my life. Even worse now that some of them are a LOT younger…
Oh, I could feel this. Fake patient and all condescending.
Yes. It’s so common it is almost a caricature to talk about it, I think.
It is common, but still you did a good job.
You know, I think of situations where this has happened to me (I am thinking right now of a job interview I went to in 1979) and I can still get aggravated obviously multi decades later. Guess the whole thing just…rankles.
Yes. Those things still bother me. I remember once a man who came to our house to do some work would not give me an estimate because my husband wasn’t home. UGH!
People (men and women both) at art shows would ask my husband and me, sitting together in the booth, who the artist was. I would say I was. Then in at least half the cases, the people would still continue to address their comments and questions to him (either they couldn’t accept me as the artist, didn’t believe me, or simply were just so used to taking the man as authority, they followed that even when they had been directed otherwise). Still aggravates me to think of this.
It aggravates me just to read about it. Ughhhh!
One more comment and then I’ll stop. Even worse is when, they would ask my husband, he would look at me, I would answer, and they would address the next comment to…my husband.
Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Now I have even less patience for this type of person – condescending and supercilious with a side dish of misogyny – than I did when I was young and I didn’t have much tolerance for it back then either.
Back then there was not much I could do about it. Now that I am later in life I have more to combat it with. It just makes me tired that it’s a prevalent today as it was in the past.