Mortality

The speaker’s awareness of mortality (her own and others’) permeates Danusha Laméris’s poem “Leg.” Mortality refers to the state of being subject to death. As “Leg” is a narrative poem, it centers on a story, and death plays an integral role in that story. The speaker ponders mortality in such a way that encompasses a full spectrum of emotions ranging from love to fear. Ultimately, the speaker’s awareness of mortality deepens her relationships in the context of sisterhood. She reflects on the sense of kinship she feels with other female beings.

The inciting incident that spurs the poem’s plot occurs in the beginning when the speaker and her friend come across a deer leg while walking in the field by the speaker’s house. The fact that the “half-eaten leg” is “gnawed clean along the thigh bone” indicates that a predator...