Poetry has its place, and that place is smack dab in the underground environs of the Toast Lounge in Union Square.

Another in a string of cold winter nights Feb. 18 Chad Parenteau and Janet Cormier plied their poetic talents on a ready and willing audience.

Before the reading I spoke to Chiemi, a talented vocalist who serenades the poets and their fans with her dulcet voice and melodies. It seems that Chiemi has released a new CD “Living On Two Coasts.”

She said the album is available at “CD Baby” an online site, and at the Boston College Bookstore.

Chiemi, originally from Hawaii, and now a practicing lawyer in the Boston area, revealed that her CD deals with her formative years in Hawaii, and her new life in Boston. She said the album is a link between then and now.

The first reader of the evening was Cambridge Poetry Award winner Chad Parenteau.

Parenteau is a medical researcher for the VA in Jamaica Plain, and earned an Emerson College MFA in Creative Writing. He is also the founder of blog FreakMachine.com that tracks the poet’s musings about the poetry world and the world-at-large.

Parenteau read a few selections from his chapbook “Self Portrait in Fire,” and some more recent works.

Like many poets, Parenteau has worked in a varied number of jobs, from a small town journalist to a waiter, and he uses his experiences to good affect. In his poem “Last Call,” Parenteau captures the often dead end world of the waiter; with all those pipedreams and plans on hold Parenteau describes these downtrodden servers at the end of their shift: “They take up a stool, and count the evening pay, waiters drink, like it’s their final day.”

Parenteau also read an ode to the iconoclastic Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and a tribute to his friend, editor and publisher, Lynne Sticklor.

Janet Cormier, a regular at the open mic segment of the Toast Poetry Series, is also an accomplished comedian, and has a venue at the “All Asia Café” in Central Square, the second Tuesday of every month.

Cormier talked about the mix of her comedy and poetry: “Comedy and poetry have one energy, but different dimensions One gives energy to the other. Sometimes I form a poem from a joke, or a joke from a poem.

Cormier, who is a painter and a fiction writer as well, said she has been influenced by many of the poets of the “Harlem Renaissance” such as: Langston Hughes, to contemporary writers like Sonia Sanchez.

Many of Cormier’s jokes and poems dealt with “Black History Month,” celebrated every February. She joked that Afro-Americans were given a raw deal with the month, because it is the shortest of the year. Cormier read a poem in tribute to Martin Luther King, and the subsequent holiday that bears his name.

The piece was full of humor and bitter irony: “We have storewide sales, and continue to incarcerate black males.

“The poet also read an elegiac poem dedicated to Malcolm X, and a couple of compelling short stories.

During the open mic, Natasha Schnieder, the doyenne of the Toast open mic poets, read from her work.

Later she told me that she was to be married in May, and poetry was going to be a major part of her ceremony.

Next to read was Joanna Nealon, a former Fulbright Scholar, and author of “Living It” ( Ibbetson Street 2004). Nealon is a poet who is blind, but her lyrical vision is unhindered. She read with her signature dramatic cadence, and earned a hefty applause.

At the end of the reading the poets and audience members milled around, chatted, and genuinely seemed to enjoy this unique community of Somerville artists.