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Category: Writing and Poetry

frank deluca, kansas city gangster (or, on being off-white in the mid-west)

this was another writing prompt from my writers group! we had to find a random wikipedia article and write a monologue based around it within 15 minutes.


so, meet frank! 

frank deluca, kansas city gangster

(or, on being off-white in the mid-west)

by Sarah Jae Leiber


Phil

he was a good guy, i guess! 

at least that’s how i knew him.

we were always friendly and we’d say hi in the supermarket and everything, but he and them kind of kept to their own kind.


i don’t mean that in a 

i love italian food!

i’m not a racist

they just stuck together, you understand? 

all those guys were no good except to each other


we’d invite the DeLucas - frankie and his wife, lillian, and the kids - to our Sunday Potlucks after Church.

they’d come - sometimes - 

frank and lillian rarely

but they’d drop off the kids to play with ours

and the kids - this was really strange

they never ate our food 

i think that’s where lillian was all the time - preparing that big, Italian, Sunday Dinner. 

i would have liked to have tried that.


we would go over there for the kids’ birthdays

and the rest of us looked at it like an excuse to look around. 

it was normal!

they looked just like normal people, like you or me, the kids running around and Frankie at the grill


but they always had a hot lasagna or something instead of a cold pasta salad


i don’t know - if i were them, i wouldn’t want to spend time around people like us, either

i guess being a law-abiding, christ-fearing American isn’t much useful when you have the chance to score big money like frank did

him and his little Sicillian gang 


maybe he got tired of only talking to other crooks

or maybe he didn’t know family unless it was Big and Catholic and So Loud


but i never really got to know him, no

you won’t see me in any police lineup any time soon

that’s for sure


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