B

Basick is the idea that vox populi herd under a mass delusion of madness. Their affairs are more insane; when their theories and art do break from form they shatter minds; their religion is science-fictional; and their day-to-day life is more thrilling and bizarre than any novella the eccentric whittles away at in his progressive solitude. Extracting the lunacy may take some wading in the boredom of assumed conversational protocol, but when it comes it comes and it comes like this “y’know it’s like blah blah and this and that and that’s how it is” and it never sounded so clear, correct, economic, and demented.

-- Chris Leo


Beasting. Dilated alveoli relish in a hyenic cackle approaching histrionics and in turn drawing more air from same said hyenic histrionics the heavy panting in and out of every corpuscle like a chest-pounding ape exploding in bloom from a Bikram yoga stretch would as the first tinges of benz tickle but will never take my blood as I bite back and resurface in a roar that rids ever baobab beneath Kilimanjaro of their nesting flocks with a sack of Plath’s pathetic mushrooms of the sea faking the filter filter filtering in uniform on unipods like the aesthetically sterile masses of Shinjuku rushing home for hymen discharge drenched bukkaka hentai as the real unsifted (harbored?) aggravant festers in nacre for what? To rot away on the 67th floor of the 85th prefecture in the 6,782nd year of wasted seppuku and hidden pearls? Hell no, pried, displayed, and gallowed around my chick’s neck, and the rest of you? Filter your filter through mine savoring the curious pain of the irritant as it bloats my urethra back up to your strewn insecurities around my chicks neck and I pant and I pant and I pant until the beasting passes.

-- Chris Leo


Beatch, “bitch” (pronounced as they do in Europe, beetch) + “beach”, is a mirage personified.

-- Chris Leo


Binorario is the real reason Italian trains do not arrive on time. Think about where they're arriving from. When a conductor has to travel from sea to sea through mountains and snow in the middle, clocks get confused. When the villages and cities passed on said voyages have not only existed since before they birthed words like “village” and "city” themselves, but when these same villages are often stuck in any number of varying epochs, vortexes form while minutes nostalgically pause to watch where they’ve rested before. “Binario” is the Italian word for “train track” and something that’s “in orario” is on time, but scholars doubt this etymology of the word. Some think it comes from “bi” + “orario” for “a splitting of time” or “two times”. Others believe that notion is too Italian, that this word could have only come from outside eyes looking in. Italians aren’t bothered by, nor do they even notice, binorario because this splitting of time is something they all carry inside them. “Bin”, an English word for “trash can”, + “orario” is what these foreign eyes feel Italians have done to time. Italy was after all one of the last Mediterranean civilizations to adopt the clock, even while its empire was light years ahead in other realms. In fact, the word “train” even has us waiting for something. From the Latin “tragere” for “pull” it has us in front of it tugging, not behind it pushing and then running to catch up.

-- Chris Leo


Blazerds are burning patches of cheek scorched by freezing winds from blizzards. Freezers or il coldo (mixture of English "cold" and Italian "caldo" for "hot") are cold sweats brought on by fevers.

-- Chris Leo


Blind Update. How wonderful, I met Vanessa for dinner on the recommendation of mutual friends who pitied us both. Over the course of the meal I was freshed up on Noah the ex-boyfriend; Stephanie the nephew; Monica the boss; the glorious but tedious resume from Rainbows and Sunbeams daycare through Barnard undergrad through the internship at Cohen & Cohen and straight up until Monica again; the mother who worries; the brother the loveable fuck-up; and of course, Melanie the incautious best friend. I told her my eyes were red and glassy due to sulfite allergies from the wine. Turns out Jesse too gets allergies from wine! Not from Zinfandel or Petit Syrah though, only Cabernet and one other one. I put her in a cab and let my allergies turn into the tears they really wanted to be as soon as I checked my crotch to see what was happening and found the cowering turtle tucked agoraphobically deep into his shell. We’ll be home soon, we’ll be home soon pal. Once I could no longer make out which cab was hers I waved down Sixth Avenue to all of them. Ciao Vanessas, thanks for the update!

-- Chris Leo


Brutaful. Something which lacks the looks, but possesses the charm. Serge Gainsbourg was brutoful. Lil' Kim is brutaful. Though this word is essentially as low brow as the idea it expresses, it's an important inclusion to River Plates because it's part of the rare grouping of words that reflect the gender of their subjects from the middle. Beautron and beautrix are its official antonyms, but well reasoned fear that the aseptic staleness of these words is in fact another type of pathogen limits their use in popular speech.

-- Chris Leo


Buona serrate is a diss restricted strictly to Roman districts we should all start using. “Buona serata” means “have a good night” in Italian and “serrate” means “having notched edges like a saw to separate better”. Both words come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, ser “to cut”. The idea being that the night cuts the days apart from each other. “Saw” also comes from the same source. To “fare/tirare una sega” in Italian means to jerk off, literally to “make the saw”. Therefore, “buona serrate” is a way of saying “go fuck yourself” that leaves the dissed asking "wait, did he just say..?" if you wanted to leave something lingering to fester later. There’s a future temporary friendship happening here. In colloquial Newyorkese, “up in this cut” means “something happening tonight” but anything more than an intuitive link River Plates finds doubtful.

nacht, notte, night = nitch, notch, niche = cuts cuts cuts

-- Chris Leo