Odes to Love Are as Coffee: Hot and Sweet

What I know about erotic poetry could fit on a dewy rose petal.

So to get in the Valentine’s Day spirit, I stopped by Friday night for Sex Kiss ‘99, held at the Alta coffeehouse in Newport Beach.

I arrived early and was offered a seat by a pleasant woman with short blond hair and tinted glasses.

“Are you a poet?” she asked.

“No, I’m with the L.A. Times,” I said, suddenly chagrined at my bourgeois station in life.

She was a contestant. We talked a bit and I asked her name.

“Christina La,” she replied slowly.

“Christina La?” I repeated.

“Christina La Sienne,’ she said. “Obviously, it’s a nom de plume.”

Why? I asked.

“I feel like I don’t have a last name,” she said. “My family went through several, and I went through several, so I finally gave up and created one.”

“Without pain, there’s no poetry,” I offered.

“If that’s so,” she said, “I’d be the greatest poet in the world.”

What do you call your poem? I asked.

“It’s called, ‘I Decided To Write a Love Poem,’ ” she said. “I had two others. One kind of went off the deep end, and the other was too sentimental, I think.”

I wished her luck as the contest began.

She and 14 other contestants filled the next couple of hours with images of chocolate sauce dribbled onto stomachs and lines like “He runs his voice up and down my spine,” and “I pause to drink from the tasty well of your navel.” Another wrote, “I’ve got a sweet tooth for your pudding.”

One young man’s poem was about someone he’d met through the singles ads in a weekly newspaper. He read bare-chested, while wearing elbow-length black gloves and a corset.

Poetry has always been an underdog in America, and poet-emcee Lee Mallory lamented that 21st century technology won’t help the cause. A perennial on the local poetry scene, Mallory lauded the 50 people in attendance by saying, “While all the other people are home watching TV tonight, you’re out doing something dangerous.”

The intimacy of the coffeehouse posed some problems. The contestants read amid such intermittent intrusions as running faucets, ringing phones, clanking dishes and servers squirting whipped cream atop the orders of coffee and hot chocolate.

“One of the hazards of a coffeehouse,” Christina said with a shrug.

Indeed, just as one poetess breathily read, “pheromones ride high,” a tray of dishes crashed onto the kitchen floor, startling the crowd but not the poetess.

When it was her turn at the mike, Christina began by saying, “I’m blind and crippled, so what the hell do I know about love?”

She’s not blind but does walk with a cane, the result of a brain tumor operation 10 years ago, she told me back at our table.

A Chapman University professor judged the contest. While awaiting the results, Christina said, “That’s a good sign. They asked me how to spell my name.”

‘Twas not to be.

A man named Frank Rugell won for his poem, “Ze Impossible Dream,” which he read in an accent he described as “a little bit Spanish, little bit French and little bit Italian.”

When I’d asked earlier if I could have a copy, he balked. “I’d rather it not be published,” he said politely.

After he won, he agreed to reread an excerpt, reminding me it sounded better with the accent:

My searching lips hover over yours

Your heavenly scent fills my nostrils

Like nectar fills the bee

Our lips touch and part

As our tongues dance in harmony

Not expecting to win, Christina was philosophical.

“Well, at least,” she said, “no one dropped a tray of dishes while I was reading.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com