Jeffrey McDaniel‘s multimedia performance piece, Check the Bags Under My Eyes for Explosives, is being billed by its sponsors as “not just a reading.” Call the hour-long poetry/video performance a very naked portrait of the artist as a young man. But lest you think him a garden-variety exhibitionist, be reminded that McDaniel’s poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 1994 and reputable journals such as Ploughshares and that many of tonight’s poems are from his recently published Alibi School. Poets Joe Ray Sandoval and others open at 9 p.m. at the Washington Project for the Arts’ Central Armature Annex, 625 D St. NW. $3. (202) 347-4813. (Holly Bass)