Finna: Poems

Dynamic poems that celebrate the Black vernacular and engage with the world through the lens of Hip Hop as well as America's vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets-from an award-winning author and poet.



fin na /'fin?/ contraction- (1) going to; intending to. rooted in African American Vernacular English. (2) eye dialect spelling of "fixing to." (3) Black possibility; Black futurity; Blackness as tomorrow.

A lyrical and sharp celebration, these poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy. In three key parts, Finna explores the mythos and erasure of names in the American narrative; asks how gendered language can provoke violence; and finally, through the celebration and examination of the Black vernacular, expands the notions of possibility, giving us a new language of hope.