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| Issue 30X: | Dec. 2025 |
| Haibun | Sequence |
| 50+137+138+121 | = 446 words |
| Footnotes: | 293 words |
By E. L. Blizzard
From a Poet to a Painter
I.
Word Vigilante
—After Pablo Picasso’s Woman with a Cape (1901)1
If she were a superhero, she’d fight misogyny with her tongue shooting out like a six-foot sword slicing and dicing while her flame-shooting crown burns it all to the ground.
park bench for a moment snowflakes on her cape
II.
Ladies
For me, there are only two kinds of women:
goddesses and doormats.
—Pablo Picasso2
Does your man push that tired, worn-out swing? The one that flies high to the sky of the Virgin Mary then snaps down so low to Ho? Does he hurl you up on a pedestal when he’s in a state of pleasure then push it over when he doesn’t like your grit? Are you tired of feeling treasured and trashed from one conversation to the next? Boy oh boy, have we got the cure for you! It’s called Walk Away and comes in a beautiful little ghost bottle that will feel so delicate in his hands but is made of bullet-proof glass. And the best part is, it’s free! Just call 1-800-FUC-KOFF.
if we had a dollar every time knowing our worth
III.
Friends
Women are machines for suffering ...
—Pablo Picasso2
I just ordered another custom-made shirt. It arrives in a couple weeks, obviously not from Amazon. Yeah know, all I hear drip from some guys’ lips just keeps giving material, take-back slogans. And, as y’all know, I’m a patient person, let a helluva lot slide. But when my line is trampled over, well, it becomes a FAFO kind of thing. Gives me the ick. Maybe I should start a business. Cuddly warm oversized hoodies, soft brushed cotton t-shirts, trucker hats with brims so big you can hide your eyerolls. Whaddaya think? Would y’all order anything? They could even be given as gifts. Wouldn’t that be something? I mean, I’ve already got so many. Maybe just my own company will save me money.
holiday brunch cloth napkins hide the shit talk
IV.
Come On, Fellas
—After Pablo Picasso’s The Red Armchair (1931)3
Ugh. No, not all but too many. These are just the same old aches. Is your tolerance for growing pains so low you have to swallow this new Red Pill?4 How long you gonna do this? What’s it been? Millennia? Do you really have to jerk so hard after just a little momentum? Come on now, get up out of your chairs, pull your faces from your screens; you should smile more. We just want to stand too and not bow our heads or be on our knees. Why you gotta be like this? Will someone please mansplain?
malignant will a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down?
Footnotes:
Links were retrieved on 26 November 2025.
- Woman with a Cape (oil on canvas, 1901) by Spanish expatriate painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is held by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Because the painting is copyrighted by the Estate of Pablo Picasso (Artists Rights Society, New York), an image does not appear here, but may be viewed online at:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1958.44 - From “How Picasso Bled the Women in His Life for Art” by Cody Delistraty in The Paris Review (9 November 2017):
“‘Women are machines for suffering,’ Picasso told Françoise Gilot, his mistress after [Dora] Maar. After they embarked on their affair when he was sixty-one and she was twenty-one, he warned Gilot of his feelings once more: ‘For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats.’” - The Red Armchair (oil and Ripolin on panel, 1931) by Pablo Picasso is held by The Art Institute of Chicago. Because the painting is copyrighted by the Estate of Pablo Picasso (Artists Rights Society, New York), an image does not appear here, but may be viewed online at:
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/5357/the-red-armchair - The ideology of the misogynistic, global-internet phenomenon known as The Red Pill is described in “Swallowing and spitting out the red pill: young men, vulnerability, and radicalization pathways in the manosphere” by Matteo Botto and Lucas Gottzén, in Journal of Gender Studies (23 September 2023), pages 596-608:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2023.2260318 - “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” is from the song “A Spoonful of Sugar,” performed by Julie Andrews and composed by Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman for the 1964 Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Spoonful_of_Sugar
E. L. Blizzard
writes in the U.S. South. Her prose and poetry are informed by her years of advocating for the rights of immigrants/refugees, survivors of intimate-partner violence, and those experiencing homelessness. Her work has been published in U.S. and international journals, including Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, Drifting Sands Haibun, #FemkuMag, The Other Bunny, Poetry Pea, Under the Bashō, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others. Some of her words have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and anthologized. She is particularly obsessed with haibun and is currently working on a collection.
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Haiga Showcase: E.L. Blizzard with commentary by Ron C. Moss in contemporary haibun online (Volume 17.2, August 2021)
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