A Web Chapbook from The Literary Review   

Bino A. Realuyo
The living should only fear the living,
you whisper in my ear. The dead can't touch us.

So you begin to brave my contours,
looking for the quickest way in.

Candlelight landscapes my breasts.
Mosquitoes feast on your skin.

The room of walls watches, its mouth
wide open, our bodies in its throat.


 Bino A. Realuyo was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. Inspired by a new life in the U.S. and his love for world history, he pursued his studies in International Relations, traveling between the U.S. and South America. After receiving his degree and bed-bunking from one country to another, he decided to return to his life long passion of creative writing.

He has finished two books: In Spite Open Eyes, a poetry collection from which his works here are drawn and The Umbrella Country, a novel to be released by Ballantine Books in early 1999.

His work has appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as The Kenyon Review, Manoa, Mid-American Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Confrontation, Puerto del Sol, New Letters and The Literary Review, and also in the recent anthologies of Filipino writings: Flippin' Filipinos on America and Returning the Borrowed Tongue. Bino is currently working on a new novel, The Ashen Parts, and a collection of poetry, The Color is Blood, and also editing The NuyorAsian Anthology, a collection of writings about Asian American life in New York City. He is a full time slave to non-profit organizations and is surviving a hermitic literary life in New York City with his cat, Pusa.

A Work by Bino A. Realuyo:

      PROCESSION

      For Father Narciso Pico,
      human rights activist, 1949-1991,
      Negros Occidental, Philippines

      Air descends in spirals. On a street,
      a flock waits, not in their usual Sunday white
      but black, a long line, spiraling as well.
      Their sweat you can't see.
      Their faces would make you wonder what really
      matters to them-the wait or the destination,
      something you often asked: the now or what comes next.
      In this village, whoever dares ask that question
      does it in murmurs, in twists of fingers,
      like their ears and eyes, attentive to every house
      they pass: who still lives there, who doesn't,
      what's gone, what remains, their names, mentioned
      every time they think of yours.
      They recognize the thoughts behind fallen lips,
      sunken skin: where does a dead priest go,
      the one gunned down for leaves and soil-
      tell them, if not, they would simply guess, if there is an
      opening in the sun, then there, into its eye, to watch
      shovels rise above the ground, your own, the sprinkle
      of soil over your casket, of dust, prayers, and names,
      once again, the names of those who will fall next to you.



Selections from Bino A. Realuyo's Work:

Poetry, Part I

Poetry, Part II

Poetry, Part III



Email Bino A. Realuyo