Up the stairs at Trident Booksellers on Newbury Street — Back Bay’s last great independent bookstore-café — a sign-up sheet goes out in the early evening and the mic opens shortly after. Readers get a short set, a few minutes apiece, performed for a crowd eating dinner and nursing coffees among the stacks.

The house rules keep it welcoming: original work or someone else’s poem with credit given, no need to memorize anything, and kindness required from everyone who steps up. That makes this one of the gentlest rooms in the city for a first-time reader, and a dependable weekly ritual for the regulars. Seating is first come, first served, so land early if you want a table — and order a plate from the cafe while you listen, which is half the fun.