Poet’s Note

This is an imaginative work. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The section headings are taken from Indeed Editorial Team, 8 Signs of Gaslighting at Work (and How to Overcome It).[1] “Gaslighting” is a form of psychological manipulation “intended to make the victim doubt their capacity, attitude, and/or reality.”[2] According to various sources, gaslighting is on the rise.[3]

1. Omission of Information

No one revealed
the identity of the donor
funding an Underground
Railroad for Embryos.


2. Negative Performance Narrative

During Covid
how could anyone publish
with children at home
and Zoom to wrangle?


3. Fluctuating Expectations

Three articles in five years
according to University rules.
The unwritten rule is bat-like
folding its wings into itself.
The unwritten rule flies around
at night.


4. Invalidation

Given a course release,
the expectation
to publish increases
exponentially.
Some say
2 +
The + means vampire kiss.


5. Professional Exclusion

I can’t talk about it.
It is confidential.
Let’s just say
the bias was ripe
as Camembert left out
for days.


6. Inconsistent Application of Rules

There are three legs
to the stool.
One leg has a hard-on,
the other two wear
a yellow and green hat.
No, this isn’t an LSAT problem.
Teaching and service
are impotent.


7. Victim Blaming

Because she wore the red
bra, because security
didn’t walk her
to the garage, because
she didn’t get the grant,
because she was a poet.


8. Selective Listening

I said the chair, humble
four-legged throne,
not the stool.

  1. Indeed Editorial Team, 8 Signs of Gaslighting at Work (and How to Overcome It), Indeed Career Guide (updated Mar. 3, 2025), https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/what-is-gaslighting-at-work.

  2. Kyle C. Velte, The Supreme Court’s Gaslight Docket, 96 Temp. L. Rev. 391, 395 (2024).

  3. See, e.g., id. at 407–38; Leslie Jamison, So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit, New Yorker: Annals of Psychology (Apr. 1, 2024), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/so-you-think-youve-been-gaslit [https://perma.cc/SCF7-PD77]; Jesse Wegman, The Supreme Court Is Gaslighting Us All, N.Y. Times (July 12, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/opinion/supreme-court-psychological-manipulation.html; Jane Campbell Moriarty, Hysteria Redux: Gaslighting in the Age of Covid, 15 ConLawNOW 65 (2024); Rachel V. Rose & Mark Kleiman, The Critical Role That Men Play in Thwarting Bias and Hostility Toward Women, Fed. Law. July/Aug. 2022, at 73; Frances E. Chapman, At the Intersection of Discrediting, Degradation and Denigration: Coercive Control, Parental Alienation, and “Institutional Gaslighting,” 44 Women’s Rts. L. Rep. 52 (2022); Carlos R. Soltero & Kayla Carrick Kelly, Gaslighting: Should It Be Recognized as a Tort in Texas? 84 Tex. Bar J. 584 (July/Aug 2021); Delaney Rives Knapp, Fanning the Flames: Gaslighting as a Tactic of Psychological Abuse and Criminal Prosecution, 83 Alb. L. Rev. 313 (2020); G. Alex Sinha, Lies, Gaslighting and Propaganda, 68 Buff. L. Rev. 1037 (2020); Taylor Simpson-Wood, The Precarious Position of the Fourth Estate in Trumptopia: The Role of Popular Culture and the Law in Protecting Media Freedom, 49 Sw. L. Rev. 1 (2020); Sofaly v. Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC, Civil Action No. 23-2018, 2024 WL 3652866, at *5, *7 (W.D. Pa. Aug. 5, 2024) (entering sanctions against counsel for ethical violations described by the court as “gaslighting”); Lall v. Corner Inv. Co., Case No. 2:20-cv-01287-CDS-NJK, 2023 WL 6197334, at *7 (D. Nev. 2023) (entering Rule 11 sanctions against plaintiff’s counsel and ordering over $90,000 in attorneys’ fees to be paid by counsel for conduct in part described by court as “gaslighting”); Healy v. Healy, Docket No. LLI FA 6017101S, 2019 WL 13455430, at *1 (Conn. Super. Ct. Aug. 14, 2019) (alleging gaslighting in a divorce proceeding); Jackson Women’s Health Org. v. Currier, 349 F. Supp. 3d 536, 540 n.22 (S.D. Miss. 2018), rev’d sub nom. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (2022) (“[T]his Court concludes that the Mississippi Legislature’s professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting”), cited in Serena Mayeri, The Critical Role of History after Dobbs, 2 J. Am. Const. Hist. 171, 204–05 (2024).