My name is Raych Jackson and I'll be reading "self-portrait as the space between us" by Trace DePass.  I chose this poem for a lot of reasons.  Obviously the language is very beautiful and I really like the choice of wording.  However, I also chose this poem because visually on the page, it's spectacular.  I think that the reasoning behind each fragment of a sentence was brilliant and I love this poem.

self-portrait as the space between us

these days i just watch
                                      them take the room inside their body
                       when they're center-stage,
which means                   they walk into the room like gravity, or
             the room, itself; 

my boy disarms
                                      my head to paint my assailant as the silhouette
                       on my right,
in the black box theater.              but i once found them as beautifully
                                                 drawn.  & imagine
if everybody around us 
                                                 knew it: a black hole as a self-
                      portrait; them as a 
dark brush against my                 canvas, cracking it open, 'til i was
             devoid of some uniqueness

but not my Black.           i was the reaction to the room Black resides in,
                   a rewinding Black
body sitting in the present            whose body once adapted to veering
                               under my red light
 

                                     of triggers
         in a play about power: this misreading of no
         even in English becoming creole of silence,
         unending of "self," the self (but for whom?)
         objectiveness objects, 'his" (name--the congregate
         of nouns known such that there was a subject
         of his education, history, wherein "he" was
         so much of the subject, his body was considered
         biased, relative if not subjective, and could not
         objective but beforehand, a literal object, so much
         so, they skinned & scorched his whole name & "he")
         became history -

i, before i brush my teeth before the mirror, drag
my     parade of history to the back of my head, 
           its tale of a pony, hogtied
            for my nappy black hairs in order

            to look professional-like & "enough"
            enough while the voice inside asks, as if i ain't me,

            as if i'm guilty of my death,
as if i'm the only only only one the others ide of who hurt me/alone,


                                                with which
                                     body, with whose autonomy.
                                     with which right would he
                                     continue to move? onto where?
                                     & since his body was punctuated
                                     male, why couldn't it        ?

                                        the left side of the cerebral cortex colors the 
                                        right side of my room any shade i like
                                        "right" to be, right when they walk into a
                                        scene i happen to be inside, wherein they
                                        have made their body center-stage of mine.