This paper studies the trajectory behavior evaluation for generalized Persidskii systems with an essentially bounded input on a finite time interval. Also, the notions of annular settling and output annular settling for general nonlinear systems are introduced. We propose conditions for annular short-time stability, short-time boundedness with a nonzero initial state, annular settling, and output annular settling for a class of Persidskii systems. These conditions are based on the verification of linear matrix inequalities. An application to recurrent neural networks illustrates the usefulness of the proposed notions and conditions.